


Never Too Late

by melicitysmoak



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, FS as single/spinster, Family, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Matchmaking, OQ as widower, Romance, Second Chances, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-14 11:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8012332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melicitysmoak/pseuds/melicitysmoak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Olicity AU future fic: Oliver was a college dropout but comes back to finish a business degree... at age 43, as he tries to recover from tragically losing his wife.  His son Connor suggests he take up an ICT elective, and when he does, he discovers that his teacher is a surprisingly attractive genius approaching spinsterhood who's had to bury her own set of past heartbreaks.  Love and friendship blossom, but is it too late for both their broken hearts to heal and learn to love again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Back to School

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecomebackkids99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecomebackkids99/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Arrow or the characters in it. I only wish I did.
> 
> I hope you like this.

Oliver was proud of himself. It was the first day of the first semester of the academic year, and he had arrived five minutes before his class was supposed to start. He tried to hold back a full-blown smile as he surveyed the amphitheater-like classroom and picked a front row seat that was almost directly in front of the teacher's podium. He took off his jacket, draped it over the back rest of the chair and began to set up his laptop on the table.

As he sat down and got settled, more students came flocking in. He couldn't help but observe their faces. Half of them were smiling and appeared excited to embark on an educational adventure while the other half looked either unhappy about commencing another semester of academic torture or just too apathetic to care, or maybe it was simply because theirs was an early morning class that forced them to get out of bed on a Monday morning. Whatever their reasons, Oliver was sure of how he felt that morning. He was happy.

He was happy to be back in school. At 43. He could have been embarrassed that in a room full of college students, he looked like he could be everyone else's father. He could've been ashamed, but he wasn't. In fact, he was thrilled that he was finally getting the chance to pursue his desire to finish a bachelor's degree in business, his twenty-year-old dream of making his family proud.

Billionaire-playboy Oliver Queen had been on his senior year at Starling City University when his years of debauchery and moral decadence all throughout adolescence had finally caught up with him. He had been kicked out of the varsity hockey team because of a scandalous brawl brought about by a rumor that he had gotten a teammate's girlfriend pregnant. When the rumor turned out to be a fact, his real girlfriend, Laurel Lance, broke up with him upon learning that he had cheated on her with one of her fellow-cheerleaders, and endured the disdain of all their so-called friends.

His father, business tycoon Robert Queen and CEO of Queen Consolidated, practically forced him to drop out of school, man up to his new responsibility of fathering a child, and marry the girl. Robert Queen had wanted his son to shape up and learn from his mistakes the hard way, so even if his mother Moira pleaded and begged for her husband to reconsider, Oliver was sent to Central City with his pregnant young bride to start a new life together, without the luxuries and conveniences that he'd been pampered with growing up. His father had set up a medium-sized apartment for them in Central City. Period. The rest had to be earned through hard work, determination, and sacrifice.

In the beginning, Oliver and his wife Sandra underwent tough times. Between sleepless nights of bottle-feeding, diaper-changing, occasional bouts of Connor's troublesome colic or teething, bed-wetting in the toddler years, and grueling days of kitchen duty and waiting tables in a downtown diner, alternating with occasional shifts at a nearby gasoline station, Oliver had felt like his life was a living hell. He had never been so miserable and unhappy in his entire life. But because he knew that it was all his fault, he couldn't and didn't complain. Not out loud. Sandra had appreciated that, and although she had felt that Oliver didn't love her then (which made family life doubly difficult and painful for her), she too had suffered in silence while dutifully carrying out her roles as wife and mother.

This was why Connor Queen had a pretty healthy childhood, better than what his dad had growing up in the Queen mansion. Sure, Oliver had everything he needed and, of course, everything he wanted, except the security of a loving home built on a solid marriage relationship – his parents having lost whatever spark it was that made them Starling City's power couple in their younger years, at a time when Oliver was going through the adjustment period of puberty.

Robert and Moira knew they couldn't blame Oliver for everything that had happened to him because they hadn't been the best role models of a happy marriage and of responsible parenting, so they didn't abandon their son entirely. They had visited him in Central City during holidays, with his younger sister Thea in tow, and they'd even stay for a few days during summers, checking in the nearest five-star hotel because Oliver's apartment was just too cramped to accommodate them. In the first several years, their hearts had ached each time they visited, seeing how their son and his young family struggled to make both ends meet, but they stood their ground because year after year, Oliver seemed to have been changing for the better.

And he had been changing for the better. By the time Connor was ten, he and Sandra had saved up enough money to venture out on their own business. Banking on his experience of working in the diner and everything he remembered in business school, he rented a commercial space in the business district of Central City and put up his own coffee shop. Over the years, the coffee shop had been a success and made a name for itself such that, by the time Connor was in junior high, Oliver and Sandra had been able to buy a house in the suburbs. When Connor graduated from senior high, Oliver had afforded to send him back to Starling City and take up management in what would have been his alma mater. Life had been going well for the younger Queens.

Until tragedy struck in the middle of Connor's sophomore year. Sandra was killed in a bank robbery cum hostage situation gone wrong. She was one of three victims that perished that day, together with the two robbers who refused to surrender to the police. Connor was devastated; he was unable to finish the semester that spring and had to take summer classes just to catch up with some of the courses he was unable to complete. Oliver mourned Sandra's passing. For almost two years he struggled with grief, terribly missing the woman who had stayed with him through thick and thin for twenty years, the woman who had put up with his immaturities and idiosyncrasies and had "grown up" with him through the hardships of life. He and Sandra started married life with the weight of guilt and regret on their shoulders, but having endured through tough times had deepened their relationship, and Oliver was sure that sometime over the past two decades, he had truly learned to love his wife.

Oliver knew his son needed him in Starling City when Sandra passed away. So he promoted his most dependable employee to shop manager and left her in-charge of the business in Central City, and he opened a branch of Connor's Brew in Starling City right across the university, just below the apartment that he rented. Thea helped him manage the coffee shop from time to time, learning the ropes of the business from the bottom, so to speak. She was the one who finished a degree in accountancy, but seemed to be more interested in the food business like her brother rather than running a Fortune 500 company. But one of the things that Robert and Moira had learned from Oliver's experience was that they shouldn't expect their children – much less oblige them – to follow the career path that they had chosen years ago. So, they let Thea learn from her brother's business, realizing that she was bent on opening her own branch of Connor's Brew on the other side of the city someday soon. Robert and Moira had been proud of their son and everything he had accomplished, and that without a college degree.

Which was what Oliver now intended to remedy.

He sat in a classroom full of energetic young people, recalling the night Thea and Connor were helping him close shop. His son and sister finally managed to convince him to do something about his educational attainment. They reasoned that it was about time he came out of mourning and did something for himself, and what better way to do that than to finish where he had left off almost twenty-two years ago. The more he thought about it, the clearer it became, until he arrived at the conclusion that it was never too late for him to get a college degree he could be proud of, and never too late for him to find happiness beyond his loss.

After two appointments with the dean of the Starling City University School of Business, Oliver was readmitted into the undergraduate program in management, the same program that Connor was one semester away from completing. However, even if the general education courses he had taken up two decades ago remained credited in his transcript, he was required to reenroll all the major courses in business that he had taken years ago, plus a couple of electives, which would take him about a year and a summer term to complete if he takes on a full load each term. Connor was going to graduate ahead of him, but that didn't matter. Oliver was going to juggle his time and energy between business school and his real-life business, but Thea's promise to support him and to hold the fort until he finished had given him the confidence boost he needed. Oliver wanted this, and he had two decades of perseverance and ten years of business success to back him up. Actually, it was this track record that convinced the dean to readmit him into the program.

So there he was, waiting for class to start.

Empowerment Technologies. He needed an elective course this semester, and Connor had suggested he enlist in this one because the instructor was one of the best – if not the best – teachers his son said he'd ever had the pleasure of learning from. It was a course in information and communication technologies, which was a prerequisite course for all IT majors in the university, but could also be taken as an elective by students from other undergraduate programs because of its many professional applications. When Thea overheard them talking about it, she was more than glad to second the motion, saying that maybe this would make his brother more techno savvy and less dependent on her for his computer and Internet issues. Connor had simply told his dad that he'd be learning lots of stuff that would make running his shops more efficient.

Oliver looked at his watch. With about a minute left, he daydreamed about what the professor would be like. Connor had said that Ms. Smoak was a genius, who made all of her students work as hard as she does, the old-fashioned way. His son had warned him that he better take her requirements seriously, "or else…." Connor had smirked, but didn't say anything more. So, Oliver imagined a geeky woman in her forties, clad in a long-sleeved dress that ended at mid-calf with a cardigan sweater to match, hair with a few streaks of grey pulled up in a bun, wearing spectacles with thick lenses that magnified her eyes like oversized marbles.

"Good morning!" Oliver was suddenly jolted from his musings by a bombastic, enthusiastic female voice that made him look up to see the very person he was just vividly picturing in his mind.

Oliver's jaw dropped, and he literally gaped in awe and admiration. Ms. Smoak was nothing like he imagined she would be, except maybe for the glasses that made her look really smart and definitely didn't make her eyes look like magnified marbles. Her bright blue orbs were as radiant as her sunshiny smile. Her long, wavy blonde tresses tumbled down her shoulders like a tapestry of golden silk. Her outfit suited her bubbly personality very well – a sleeveless pink peplum blouse with matching pencil skirt that ended some inches above her knee, showing off the curves of her bottom and a pair of legs that looked flawless for a woman in her early thirties, if he wasn't mistaken. The strappy beige heels that matched her skin tone accentuated the said assets quite well, he might add. Oliver couldn't have remembered the last time he had appreciated – okay, gawked – at an attractive woman this way, even if he tried.

Ms. Smoak had long been done with her introductions and the orientation to the course syllabus, but most of that had been white noise in Oliver's ears. She had already begun calling on students to introduce themselves, and when she called out Oliver's name from the class list, she had to repeat it three times before he snapped out of his daze.

"Mr. Queen? Are you with us?" she asked, standing just a few feet in front of him.

"What?" he replied, looking up to his professor's pretty face. He still couldn't believe he had a beautiful blonde bombshell for a teacher. "Yeah, uhm… I… I'm here. My name's Oliver. Oliver Queen. Business major."

"Well, welcome to class, Mr. Queen. I'm glad you've finally decided to join us," she remarked, smirking.

Ms. Smoak began her first lecture after everyone's turn was done. Never had Oliver been so attentive to a teacher than he'd been that morning. He caught every word she spoke. He noticed every adorable facial expression that was accompanied by the animated waving of her hands in the air. He enjoyed every digression brought about by her occasional babbling that made the class laugh or giggle (which, by the way, he thought was extremely hilarious and cute). By the end of class, Oliver's facial muscles had stretched far beyond their usual, and for quite an extended period of time, such that his hands instinctively reached for his cheeks to massage them even before he stood up to leave. He realized that he hadn't smiled that much since… since his wife had passed away.

That night at the coffee shop, Connor asked his dad how first day back in college had been. Oliver replied with a grin, "It was great, son! First day high." When Connor asked him if he'd already met Ms. Smoak, his grin widened. He evaded having to answer the question, and instead said to Connor, "Thanks for making me take that course. I think I'm really going to learn a lot from her class." Connor's response as he walked away grinning was simply, "I'm sure you will, Dad. I'm sure you will."

The first few weeks of classes were a period of adjustment for Oliver. He had to get used to reading lengthy chapters once again, memorizing key concepts, borrowing books from the library, doing Internet research, writing academic papers, and lots and lots of homework. Connor usually helped him out, and sometimes even Thea did, both of them having taken up the same courses before. But what really made school easier and manageable for Oliver was first period every Monday and Wednesday. Two hours in Ms. Smoak's class always made his day lighter and brighter. Her class made him want to get out of bed in the morning and study. Really study. Real hard. Computer technology wasn't really his cup of tea, but boy, did he learn every single topic and skill in her syllabus real fast! In fact, he spent more hours learning stuff in her class than he did learning the lessons in his business courses. Thea had teased him a couple of times that he really didn't need Connor to tutor him in ICT because his teacher seemed to be doing her job well enough.

Oliver had not only been studying really well for her class; he had also been studying HER really well. The course syllabus gave him her first name. Felicity. He thought it was the perfect name for someone like her. Her name personified how he felt each time he sat in her class. Too bad he hadn't had the chance yet to call her by her first name, as he thought it inappropriate to do so. He hadn't heard anyone in class address her other than as Ms. Smoak or Prof. Smoak.

As early as week one, he had already established that she was still single. No ring. He remembered how relieved he had felt knowing that. By week three, he'd pretty much gotten acquainted with her fashion preferences, and by week five, he had familiarized himself with most of her quirks and favorite expressions. He did think she tended to be nerdy, but of the pleasantly attractive kind. Her intelligence was admirable, and her passion for her field of expertise was contagious. She also had an air of candidness and free-spiritedness that drew him in.

On week seven, he mustered enough courage to approach her for consultation. Sure, he needed some help with setting up the project she assigned the class, which required him to create a website for an actual business establishment, and he picked Connor's Brew, of course. But really, he'd been wanting to see more of her outside of class. He was very discreet each time he came for consultation in her office at the faculty center; every minute made his heart swell with fondness. And when she complimented him for a job well-done with the finished website weeks after, he was so overjoyed that it was a miracle he hadn't fist-pumped in the air in front of her or even hugged and squeezed her tight in his arms. He was still so ecstatic coming back to the coffee shop that afternoon that he had the cashier, the barista, and the server inform their customers that refillable brewed coffee was "on the house" until closing time that day.

By mid-semester, Oliver decided that it was time for him to make a move. He wanted so much to get to know his favorite blonde more. There was no doubt in his mind that he really liked Felici- Ms. Smoak, just as he had no doubt in his heart that he was ready to move on. He was convinced that he was ready to open up his heart to someone special again. He figured it was about time, and that it was never too late for him to find the kind of love he'd been searching for and waiting for all his life.

He approached her after class one day as she walked out of the room. He offered to help carry her things, and she politely obliged. Just as they came to a stop outside her office, Oliver popped the question: "Ms. Smoak, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but… would you… would it be okay if I asked you out? Have coffee with me or something? I know this great coffee place-"

"Mr. Queen, are you asking me out on a date, as in a date date?" she asked with an amused expression on her face despite the narrowing of her eyes and the creasing of her forehead.

"Uh, that would be a yes," he answered with a winsome smile, trying his best to hide how nervous and tense he was, but failing to do so as he shifted his weight from one foot to another.

Her eyes widened and she quickly replied, "Well, this is a first. I've never had a student ask me out on a date before. I guess that's because I've never had a grown forty-something man in my class before. Not that I'm implying you're too old to be asking me out, because you're not. I mean, you're definitely not that old, old if you're forty-something. And you're probably not that much older than me, I think. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure if you are forty-something, more or less. And now you're probably wondering why I'm babbling just because you asked me out for coffee, so I'm just gonna stop before I embarrass myself any further in front of a student, in three-two-one." She finally shut up, eyes closed and bottom lip crushed between her teeth.

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about, Ms. Smoak. I actually find your babbling very… cute," Oliver remarked as she opened her eyes.

"Oh, spare me," she responded, rolling her eyes.

"I'm serious! It is cute," he reiterated. "But I'm still wondering if you'd go out with me, though. So, would you?" he asked.

She sighed. "Thank you for asking, but I'm afraid I can't. It's policy. ICT faculty handbook clearly and specifically prohibits instructors from dating students. Sorry."

Oliver was disappointed and a bit downcast with how that turned out. Since when had the university enforced something like that? Back in his day, teachers dated whomever they wanted. He remembered two of his professors in business school dating, getting engaged, and eventually getting married. Well, he easily accepted that some things had to have changed over time, but he didn't have to accept defeat at the first try. Granted, Felici- Ms. Smoak did say that she CAN'T; she didn't, however, say that she WON'T. That, to him, was not her turning him down. He preferred to think of it as her giving him a window of a chance, no matter how small. And Oliver was going to take it as soon as final exams were over, and he was certainly not taking another class of hers as an elective next semester.


	2. Back in the Saddle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver tries again and fails. He tries again. Over coffee and red velvet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second installment for this Olicity AU fic. Enjoy! (especially if you're sweet-toothed like me) And if you do, even at the slightest, it would be nice to read a review or comment from you. Thanks!
> 
> Disclaimer: Once again, I do not own Arrow and its characters. I only wish I do.

Final exams were over, and Oliver couldn't believe that he had gotten an A- in Ms. Smoak's class. His final grade in her class was the first one he'd searched in the university website's learning platform as soon as word had gone out that grades were already published online and ready for viewing. No hyperbolic expression ever invented was adequate enough to describe the exhilaration he felt. He had never gotten a grade higher than B+ since his high school days.

When he passed the ICT building the day before winter break to return some books in the library, he ran into her in the hallway. He greeted her and thanked her for giving him the A- and she replied with a smile that brightened the rest of his day (rather, his week).

"Oh, you don't have to thank me," she had said. "You deserved it, Mr. Queen. You worked real hard. And it showed in your written tests, hands-on tech work, and digital outputs. I hope taking the class has been worth your while."

Oliver just kept gazing at her pretty face, admiring the sparkling eyes framed by dark-rimmed glasses. He mumbled softly, not intending for her to hear him say, "You have no idea…"

"Excuse me?" Ms. Smoak said tentatively, her eyes squinting a bit. She wasn't sure she heard him right.

"Oh, uhm… What I meant to say was… Yes, of course! I learned a lot from your class. You helped me better appreciate technology and discover how it can make business more efficient. Your passion for computers and ICT is really, quite contagious." He grinned at her widely.

"Thank you! I really love what I do here. I get to share my expertise and experience with the younger generation. Make a difference. You know? I find teaching more fulfilling than just sitting in front of a computer work station all day and fighting my way up the corporate ladder, especially as a female IT specialist. You see, I worked for your family's company for ten years, but when this university offered me a scholarship to the master's degree program five years ago at the recommendation of Walter Steele, I took it. So, here I am!"

Oliver was glad to discover details about the woman he intended to pursue. She probably wasn't aware that in her rambling she had inadvertently divulged some personal information that he needed to help him come up with a full-proof strategy to win her heart. He felt that the last twenty years had made him rusty when it comes to the tools and tricks of the dating trade, so he needed to be extra cautious and creative.

He didn't know exactly how he should feel about that tiny piece of information that she had worked for Queen Consolidated for ten years prior to teaching in the university. Why had she left the company? Had she been unhappy, or unsatisfactorily compensated? Maybe she weighed her options and thought that she would never get promoted to executive position. The corporate grind with its accompanying squabbles and intrigue that he was all too familiar with must have turned her off. It was safe to say that she was neither a social climber nor an ambitious go-getter who stepped on others in order to arrive on top. That was good to know, and he liked her all the more for it.

Oliver also wondered how different it would have been if he'd met her earlier. He had been able to visit QC a few times over the past ten years, and there might have been a slim chance that their paths had crossed at least once. He was sure he would have more than noticed the attractively smart blonde given the opportunity. But he would have been still married to Sandra then, and they had a son. It would have been a mistake.

That day outside the ICT library was perfect, though. They stood there talking candidly, and he felt as if he were floating on cloud nine in front of Ms. Smoak, his teacher. Correction, former teacher. So, Oliver took the chance to carry on a conversation that he hoped would lead to something more.

"Well, I'm glad you're here, Felicit-" He cut himself off when he caught himself calling her by her first name. Embarrassed, he immediately apologized. "Forgive me, Ms. Smoak. I didn't mean to-"

The adorable, amiable blonde interrupted him. "Oh, you can stop calling me Ms. Smoak, Mr. Queen. It's been a bit awkward, I must say – you calling me Ms. Smoak – since you're clearly older than me. Slightly! Slightly older than me, I think." She paused to chew on her lower lip for a second. When she had recovered from the brief babble, she composed herself and continued. "What I meant to say is that, the fall semester is over and you're no longer my student. That is, if you're not taking any of my classes next semester?"

"Oh no, I'm not!" Oliver quickly replied. "Not that your classes are impossible, or boring. Because they certainly are not! In fact, your class was awesome. You're awesome! It's just that… I've been meaning to… I've always wondered what it would be like to… call you by your first name." He dropped his gaze and stared at his shoes, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. He hoped she didn't notice the blush that crept up his neck to his cheeks. He felt like a schoolboy crushing on his teacher.

She chuckled before she responded with a grin, "Usually I'm the one babbling and talking in sentence fragments. You certainly don't seem like the type that would." Their gazes locked for a moment, and then she spoke again. "Anyways, you can call me Felicity from now on."

"Great! As long as you call me Oliver. Deal?" he asked, his right hand extended for a handshake.

"Deal," she replied, taking his hand.

Oliver froze. His hand burned with fire at the contact. How was it possible for a person to freeze and burn at the same time? Electricity coursed through his veins. It had been a long time since someone set him on fire this way. Way too long. He'd forgotten how amazing it felt.

Little did he know that the same simple handshake had also sent shivers up and down Felicity's spine. And she didn't know what she was going to do. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to feel.

That first touch changed everything. No longer were they just teacher-and-student anymore. Friends maybe? Maybe more.

So, yeah. Handshake. Something that normally took just a couple of seconds felt like a lifetime. But this was definitely not normal for them. It was as if his hand was glued to hers. He wouldn't let go. And when Felicity finally wiggled her tiny hand out of his bigger one and dropped it at her side, she asked, "Was there something else? Oliver?"

Oliver took the plunge.

After taking a deep breath, he answered, "Yes, there is. I… I was wondering if you would consider taking me up on my previous offer to have coffee? The fall term is over now, and I'm technically not your student anymore, so… Would you? Go out on a date? With me?" He asked tenderly, hope gleaming in his captivating eyes.

It was Felicity who froze this time. There was a moment of absolute silence when neither of them breathed. Then, she heaved a sigh and replied, "Oliver, I'm afraid I still have to decline. I hope you don't take it the wrong way, because it's really not about you. It's just me. I prefer to not date. Anyone. Not anymore. I'm happy this way."

She knew that it was a lie, and for years, she'd been trying to convince herself that it was true. She wasn't happy; she was lonely. But she was safe. What was wrong with her? The nicest, most handsome guy she has ever met was standing in front of her, signifying that he was seriously interested in her, yet she chose to run to her go-to place – the danger-free zone where she was shielded from getting hurt ever again.

"Oh. I understand." That was all he could say. In dismay.

That was a lie, too. Oliver didn't understand, but he wasn't sure what else to say. If he tried again, she might misinterpret it as him being pushy. He couldn't figure out why a wonderful woman like her would prefer to live alone and find it satisfying. But who was he to question her preferences. He didn't want her to think that he didn't respect her wishes. So they parted ways amicably.

Thinking that he wouldn't get the chance to greet her later on, Oliver turned around and greeted her, "Merry Christmas!" That was how he found out that she was Jewish. He held on to that additional piece of information for future reference. See, he wasn't planning to go down that easily. He was just going to take some time to regroup, to figure out how he was going to get her to change her mind.

*****************************

Christmas and New Year's went by. He spent the holidays with family at the Queen mansion, trying with all his might to distract himself with the festivities from the nagging thought of a certain blonde beauty that had captured his heart. The problem was, Oliver Queen couldn't get Felicity Smoak out of his system. He'd go to bed wondering if she were watching a late night movie, reading a book, or working on something in her computer. He'd wake up thinking about her. Did she sleep in during the holidays, or was she an early riser regardless? Did she work out and go for early morning runs like he did? (She sure had nicely toned muscles on her limbs and on the other parts that mattered.) His face would light up with a smile at the thought, and more than once Connor had teased him for grinning like a fool when he spaced out while daydreaming about her.

Oliver did find out during winter welcome that Felicity was a health and fitness buff like him. Connor mentioned that he saw her jogging on campus the day he returned to the dorm. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so there were supposed to be no classes, and all university offices were closed. He deduced that she must live on campus then, perhaps in one of the faculty housing facilities. So, the next day, he went for a jog on campus before his first class for the spring semester was supposed to start, hoping that he would run into her again. He didn't know what he would do if he did, or what he would say to her. All he knew was that he had to see her again. That day, he didn't. And the day after, and the day after that.

He wondered why he hadn't seen her anywhere on campus in the last three days when the spring semester classes were supposed to have started already. Had she gotten sick? Last autumn, Felicity never cancelled class because she was sick. She was present and punctual the whole time. He couldn't resist the urge to find out if anything had happened to her, so he went to the ICT department asking for Ms. Smoak. He didn't plan on seeing her; just knowing she was okay was enough for him. The receptionist of the department willingly shared information, because he had used his Ollie Queen charm on her. The middle-aged woman not only told him that she was on leave until Inauguration Day holiday and would be starting her classes the following Monday; she also inadvertently mentioned that Ms. Smoak always went home to Vegas this time of the year, and that this year was special because she was celebrating her fortieth birthday with family and friends. The lady even added that Ms. Smoak was a hard-working and diligent teacher who really deserved a relaxing break, as she was working on completing her doctoral degree that will culminate in a dissertation defense scheduled towards the end of the spring semester.

Forty. Wow. Oliver was pleasantly surprised to find out that Felicity was only three years younger than him. He had mistaken her to be in her early or mid-thirties because she definitely looked much younger than most forty-year-old women. She looked so… refreshing. She reminded him of sunshine and rainbows after a gentle rain. She was like a breath of fresh air. How was it that this gorgeous, charming, intelligent woman was still single? It puzzled him intensely. But he was extremely happy about it too, knowing that she was still available.

One thing scared him though. She was well on her way to having the letters Ph.D. attached to the end of her name. He, on the other hand, was still striving to finish a bachelor's degree. If he decided to pursue her regardless of her initial negative response, would she even consider giving someone like him a chance? He felt like he was way out of her league.

The pressure intensified that weekend when Walter Steele, a good family friend, dropped by the coffee shop just to say hello to him and Connor and Thea. The man had just arrived from spending the holidays with family in London and had wanted to bring their overdue Christmas presents. During their conversation over brewed coffee, Connor mentioned that Oliver had done quite well in business school last semester and even got his first A- in Ms. Smoak's ICT course. Walter congratulated Oliver, of course. But since Ms. Smoak's name rang a bell, Walter steered their conversation in her direction. The polished Englishman and CFO of Queen Consolidated spoke nothing but praise for Felicity, recalling some instances when her brilliance and impeccable work ethics had helped QC's IT department grow and expand in the ten years that she had been there.

And that was when it suddenly hit him. If Felicity had worked for his family's company for about a decade long, there was a good chance that she had become familiar with Ollie Queen's old self – the one that he had long abandoned. If he did the math right, he would have already been living in Central City for five years by the time she had come on board. But still, she may have heard of both rumors and facts about the sordid past of the Queen family heir, the notorious billionaire-playboy and college drop-out. Could it be that this was the real reason why she had turned him down when he'd asked her out twice and just couldn't be straightforward about it?

He thought he had gotten over regrets of his troublesome past at some point over the last twenty years. He had worked so hard to become a changed man and a decent person. Now those regrets resurfaced, mixed with a subtle dose of a lowered self-esteem.

Those issues surrounding Felicity Smoak threatened and frightened Oliver, and for a while, Connor and Thea speculated about why he had become quite broody. Oliver spent the rest of the week thinking things through, weighing his options, and counting the cost. The words of his son and his sister, when they were coaxing him to go back to school, rang in his ears once again. "It's never too late," they had encouraged him, and he figured that they were right.

It was never too late for him to find the love of his life. Never too late for an honest-to-goodness romance, to be with someone special and be happy – someone he may not even deserve. Someone precious like Felicity Smoak.

Oliver decided that he was going to give it one more try. If she still refused, he wouldn't mind simply being friends.

****************************

That Monday afternoon, he brought her a cup of coffee – Connor's Brew's signature blend – and two blueberry muffins, telling her that since he had failed miserably to convince her to go out with him for coffee twice, he figured he could just bring the coffee to her. Felicity smirked. She bit her lower lip and shook her head, admiring his persistence. To Oliver's astonishment, she said to him, "Okay, Oliver. I get it. I'll go out with you for coffee. But just this once. If you promise you'll never ask me out again." She raised her eyebrows at him expectantly, thinking that she had outsmarted her unrelenting admirer. She thought that he would either back off and leave her alone, or, grab the opportunity, after which she wouldn't have to go on another date with him again. One date wouldn't kill her, she thought.

But Oliver Queen proved her wrong.

"You've got yourself a deal," he responded confidently. "Shall we?" He winked at her and stretched his right arm outwards, leading the way down the hallway. She handed him the brown bag of muffins, and then she turned and walked out the front entrance of the ICT building, vigorously shaking her head in disbelief.

Oliver followed closely behind her. She felt slightly self-conscious, looking over her shoulder more than once as they exited the north exit of campus. As soon as they were outside campus grounds, Oliver picked up the pace, walking beside her and leading her to the curb to cross the street. Once the pedestrian light turned green, she felt his warm hand land on the small of her back, and she gasped in surprise, nearly losing her grip on the cup of coffee she was still holding. She thought it was a sweet gesture for him to guide her this way. Chivalry wasn't dead after all. He kept his hand on her back until it moved to her elbow when he opened the door to Connor's Brew.

An hour and two cups of coffee later, Felicity was ready to raise the white flag. Truth be told, she had enjoyed every minute in his company. Their friendly conversation began with some of the stuff they both liked about their class last Fall. Jokes about the geeky girl who had always fallen asleep during her lectures were exchanged. Oliver also shared with her that the number of customers coming into the shop and the number of calls for food deliveries in the university and the nearby blocks had increased since he put up the website for Connor's Brew, and that he had to hire a couple of new employees as a result. He introduced her to Thea, who was more than pleased to meet the woman who had her brother wrapped around her fingers. Thea told her that business has been doing well, thanks to her brother's newly acquired technical skills that made bookkeeping and advertising more efficient for them.

When Thea left them to resume her work behind the cash register, Felicity started asking him about how QC was. She fondly recalled some good friends there that had stayed long after she resigned, and was relieved to learn that one of the IT supervisors that had treated her like dirt was the same guy that Oliver had overheard from his parents as having been fired just before Christmas. When Oliver asked her if she missed working in IT and specializing in cyber-security, she admitted that there were times she did, but she also said that she had no plans of entertaining a career shift anytime soon, especially since she was working on finishing her doctorate. She said she was happy doing what she was doing at the moment. When Oliver reaffirmed her about the vocation she had chosen and complimented her for being one of the best teachers he'd ever had in his life, Felicity blushed and avoided his steady gaze.

It was a good thing Oliver didn't ask her if she was having a good time, because it wouldn't have been fair for her to lie to him a second time. He'd been awfully thoughtful, kind, and patient to her, and she found those qualities very endearing. She didn't have the heart to deny it, if and when he asked.

When Oliver asked if she wanted a third cup of coffee, she said she already had enough caffeine in her system to keep her awake until midnight. Oliver extended an open invitation instead, telling her that she was welcome to come to the shop for free coffee and pastries anytime, but she vehemently shook her head and waved her hands in the air, telling him that she didn't want to take advantage of their new friendship just to satisfy her need for sugar rush. He negotiated that they meet in the middle: she could come in anytime, but instead of getting coffee and pastries for free, he'd just give her a 50% discount. She obliged with a smile.

Oliver pushed on. He asked which among the muffins, cupcakes, cheesecakes, and treats she would care to take home. She looked at him, a cute pout forming on her face. "You don't play fair, Oliver Queen," she said. "How did you know that I have a sweet tooth?"

"I didn't, actually. I just took a chance. You seem like a red velvet kind of girl," Oliver remarked. He couldn't help the twinkle in his eyes.

"What makes you say that?" she asked.

"Well…" he began to answer, a bit unsure of how to proceed. His confidence was mixed with a slight trepidation as he attempted a clever explanation. He thought she might misinterpret his light-hearted sincerity for mere wit and charm, but he chose to proceed. "I have a way with cakes, you see. Red velvet is one of my favorite ones to bake, like the ones you see at the counter over there. It only looks reddish because of the coloring added to the mixture, but it's actually chocolate cake. Traditionally it's prepared as a layer cake topped with cream cheese or cooked roux icing." He paused for a beat and looked Felicity straight in the eye. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but I happen to think you're a lot like red velvet, Felicity. You're a brilliant, beautiful woman with a bubbly personality that wins the hearts of everyone around you. But I think there's more to you than meets the eye. I think the real you is somewhere beneath the cream cheese top, just waiting to be discovered and enjoyed. There are layers of who you really are that I would very much like to get to know better. If you'd let me."

Felicity swallowed hard. No one has ever said anything as sweet as that to her before. She knew it wasn't just a line. She saw the earnestness in his eyes. She felt his steady resolve to pursue her and heard the delightful ardor in his voice. How could she not give him a chance? She had sworn to herself that she'd never let herself fall for another man after her first and only serious relationship went down the drain, leaving her damaged beyond repair. But there was just something about this man sitting in front of her, asking with every ounce of decency in him that she simply let him into her life.

Maybe things between them will eventually become serious, beautiful even. Maybe not. Maybe they'll just stay friends. But she'll never know unless she takes a step of faith. She had always known that she's been living in a bubble of self-protection, afraid to break free. But it's been pretty lonely in that bubble for so long. If she wasn't ready to get out, then maybe she could let him in.

A warm, winsome smile gleamed on Felicity's face as she leaned forward and placed both her forearms on the table. "Well, Mr. Queen, I think you've just earned yourself a second date," she said.

Oliver's eyes widened in surprise, and then his face broke out with a smile that reached his ears. Oh yeah, he was back in the saddle and was in for the ride of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, reviews and comments are welcome. Do drop a line or two. Thanks for reading!
> 
> In between this chapter and the next, Oliver and Felicity's friendship grows and deepens into something more. The next update finds them at the brink of committing to take their relationship to the next level... as middle-aged adults with past emotional baggage. Find out how that plays out.


	3. Back to Basics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Considering how long it has been since they'd last dated someone new, Oliver and Felicity get re-oriented with the basics of building a relationship through twenty-four dates, and the twenty-fifth one leads to a fork in the road.

Felicity stared at the woman in the mirror in front of her, incredulously wondering how she ever got to this point. Why she let herself get to this point. Tonight was going to be her twenty-fifth "date" with Oliver, and she stood in front of her bedroom mirror frozen on the spot, her nerves wracked with anxiety. She thought she looked great in her bright red, floor-length evening gown that would give onlookers a subtle peek at her left leg through a slit that went up to mid-thigh. She had spent almost an hour curling her blonde mane and securing it in an elegant up-do. She also chose to wear her contact lenses, keeping her face free of the dark-rimmed glasses that she usually wore every day.

She was convinced that her outward appearance concealed what she was trying so hard to keep hidden. To say that she was nervous was an understatement. She was certifiably terrified! Terrified of walking into the ballroom of the Queen mansion as Oliver's date and being the object of the scrutiny of more than a hundred of Queen Consolidated's top executives and their plus ones for the evening. She took a deep breath and shook her head once more, thinking whether or not she should take off the dress and just text Oliver that she wasn't feeling well and she could no longer make it. It wouldn't be a complete lie. She really did feel dizzy and nauseous.

But no, she couldn't do that to him. They'd been seeing each other for almost two months now, and Oliver has been simply… amazing! He's been so wonderful she sometimes felt like it was too good to be true.

Just a week ago when they were taking an afternoon stroll at the boardwalk of the Starling City Bay, each enjoying a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone, Oliver had suddenly taken her hand and bravely asked if she would do him the honor of being his date for QC's charity gala to be held in his family's ancestral home. It had been a beautiful afternoon: the sunset was perfect, the sea breeze blowing on her face and messing up her hair calmed her, the ice cream on her tongue relaxed her after a long day at school, and best of all, her hand in his warmer one soothed her. It didn't take her long to overcome the initial apprehension of finally being introduced to his parents and of most probably being the center of everyone else's attention as soon as she walks into the gala by his side. She had squeezed his hand and with a smile said "I'd love to go." He didn't even have to ask her twice.

Why wouldn't she say yes? After all, she had crossed the threshold that afternoon in his coffee shop when she told him that he had earned himself a second date. She had taken that risk and let him into her bubble long before he'd asked her to go to the gala as his date. She had opened the door to her heart, and since then, he had become part of her "safe zone," which consisted of very few people. There Oliver had joined her mother, John and Lyla Diggle, and her best friend Caitlyn, whom she sees very rarely because Caitlyn lived in Central City.

Felicity had asked her good friends and confidants if she had made a mistake agreeing to go to the gala with Oliver. Two days after she'd said yes, she had begun second-guessing herself, anxious about being seen with Oliver in such an event. She worried that she would inevitably run into some familiar QC folks and then become the subject of office gossip. John and Lyla had encouraged her not to worry too much, and Caitlyn had told her that it was about time she put the past behind her and really moved forward instead of staying stuck in a lonely rut. At first she admitted to being stuck in a rut but resented the fact that her friend described said rut as lonely. But Caitlyn knew exactly how to get through to Felicity, and she did. Felicity not only admitted that she was indeed lonely but also that she was scared about going public about her and Oliver's…

Felicity stopped short at the thought. She still hadn't moved from the spot in front of her mirror. For a moment she was puzzled that she hadn't given much thought about what it was that she now had with Oliver. She was sure they were friends. Very good friends, actually. She loved spending time with him, and over the past weeks, she had grown fonder and fonder of him. In fact, if she were to be totally honest, she must confess that she wanted to spend more and more time with him as the days went by.

In the first few weeks, they'd only been seeing each other at Connor's Brew. They would chat for a couple of hours over coffee and pastries, or they'd have dinner there in their private booth, sometimes with Thea, or Connor, or Thea and Connor. Sometimes he'd drop by her office in the university and bring her coffee or hot cocoa and some muffins or bread he'd freshly baked.

Felicity couldn't forget the day Oliver discovered – in the most unpleasant way – that she was allergic to nuts. That Saturday morning Oliver had asked her to come with him to the back of the shop. He brought her to the kitchen to try a new recipe he'd been experimenting on. His mistake was letting her have a couple of bites – which, by the way, she absolutely adored – before telling her that it was carrot-pineapple-walnut cake. That's when he learned what an Epi pen was and how to use it on her in case of an emergency. They still ended up in the E.R. of Starling City General because he had insisted that he take her there for doctors to do a more thorough check-up just to make sure she was safe.

After she had recovered from her allergic reaction, they discovered their mutual love and enthusiasm for physical fitness. They jogged and ran together Tuesday and Thursday mornings when they both didn't have first period classes. In the beginning they only ran around campus, but after two weeks, they'd decided they needed more challenging routes. They'd drive to the bay area and run on the beach and the boardwalk. Twice they even tried jogging up and down a trail that cut through Starling Central Park and Starling City Gardens. Oh, how she enjoyed running with him! Oliver was a fine gentleman, no doubt about it, but when it came to their morning runs, he had considered her an equal in every way, competition even. He didn't adjust his strides for her sake, and she liked the challenge. In fact, she noticed that he seemed to be delighted that she could keep up with him.

Felicity grinned when she recalled two things. First was how amusing it had been for them to show up at their meeting place wearing running outfits of the same color scheme each and every time. Second was the look on Oliver's face the first time she walked up to his car in the campus parking lot wearing pink running shorts and a black-and-pink spandex sports bra. She was one hundred percent sure that he was checking her out since the moment he spotted her approaching. The ride to the boardwalk had been awkward and quiet that morning; Oliver kept his eyes straight ahead, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while humming a song. She was sure that he hadn't noticed the cold sweat forming on his forehead or that he had been breathing unevenly. She also remembered feeling butterflies in her stomach and the heat of an intense blush creeping upwards from her neck to her face at the flattering thought that this handsome, incredible man had considered her attractive even at her age.

Felicity's grin widened as she recalled the next morning run when Oliver arrived a couple of minutes late at the campus parking lot. He was wearing a black singlet that showcased his majestic chest and the undulating waves of firm muscles on his arms, and his dark grey cycling shorts hugged his well-toned muscles in all those gorgeous parts. (He just about drove her crazy all morning, and she pined for him the rest of the day!) She also remembered the mischievous grin on his face, telling her that he had intended to get even, and that he had.

During the ride to the boardwalk, Felicity squirmed in her seat. She felt slightly embarrassed that a middle-aged woman like her still got seriously attracted to such an impressive specimen of the male species. She also felt a bit irritated because she thought that it was quite unfair for a guy in his forties to still be so physically… fit. She spent the rest of the car ride blaming her hormones for what she thought were hot flashes. She promised herself that she would Google the signs and symptoms of early menopause as soon as she got back to her apartment.

When coffee and pastries and early morning runs in spandex sports outfits were no longer enough, Oliver and Felicity had moved on to afternoon walks on campus, in a park, on the beach, or down the boardwalk. It had been only about two weeks ago, if she remembered correctly, when she realized that they had begun the HHWW habit. The first time she noticed that they had already been holding hands while walking was at Starling Gardens. Oliver had helped her cross the hanging bridge when she decided it was a good idea to do so with her heels on; he wanted to make sure she made it across unharmed. It had been a good half hour or so after that when she noticed that he hadn't let go of her hand since. When she realized this, she contemplated pulling her hand away, but it had warmed her heart so much and made her feel special – and safe – that she decided not to. The next time their hands intertwined, she had been more keenly aware of how Oliver rubbed his thumb up and down hers as he told her stories about his childhood and about Connor's childhood. She had wondered how such a small, simple, mundane action could make her feel so precious and cared for.

A couple of times Oliver had asked to take her out to dinner in a fancy restaurant of her choice, but she had declined. Both times. Coffee and jogging were perfectly acceptable in her safe zone; those were things that friends normally did together. But formal dinners in plush restaurants where couples dressed up and drank wine or champagne were a different story. Felicity had felt that she wasn't ready for that yet, since that would mean that whatever it was that they shared had become more than mere friendship. She was comfortable with being friends, even if she knew that deep down something was beginning to shift inside her. She wasn't sure what to do with her feelings, so she had turned him down both times. Oliver had been very nice and understanding about it, even if she hadn't been able to give him any valid excuse. He hadn't pressured her, and he hadn't asked her out to dinner again until that day when he had asked her to be his date to the charity gala. It obviously meant a lot to him, and so she acquiesced. As any good friend would.

So there she was in front of her bedroom mirror, transfixed at the image of a Felicity Smoak who hadn't gone to a formal evening event as anyone else's date in ages. Was she ready for this? She wasn't sure. But she figured it was worth trying. If things didn't go well, then she'd have a pretty good reason to turn him down the next time he asks.

Felicity was putting on her earrings when she heard the knock on her apartment door. She looked at the clock on her bedside table. "He's right on time," she murmured as the corners of her lips curled up to a small smile. "I guess the office gossip about him being perennially tardy isn't true after all. It's either that, or he has really changed through the years," she thought, slipping on her silver, rhinestone-studded stilettos.

She scampered to her front door and opened it gently. She found Oliver standing outside, facing the apartment directly in front of hers. His right hand was clenched into a fist and he was rubbing his thumb against his forefinger. It looked like he was holding something with his other hand. He rocked on the balls of his feet, muttering something under his breath. Felicity heaved a sigh before greeting him. She felt relieved that he appeared to be just as nervous as she was.

"Good evening, Oliver," she said softly.

Apparently, that startled Oliver because he flinched and then swiftly turned around to face her. He gazed at her as if she was an angel sent to deliver him from a monotonous and miserable life of loneliness, and he was rendered speechless and dumbfounded. He had totally forgotten all about the bouquet of flowers he held in his left hand.

Felicity frowned. "Is something wrong? Are you all right?" She started to get worried as she saw his face and his ears flushed red. He didn't seem to be breathing.

When Oliver finally remembered how to speak, he stuttered, "I… uh… Hi! Y-you… look… You're so beautiful, Felicity." Her name rolled out of his tongue like it had just savored honey.

Her eyes glistened, and she smiled, showing most of her pearly whites. "Oh… Thank you," she replied. "Are those for me?"

"What?" Oliver asked, obviously still mesmerized at the sight of her. "Oh, these? Yes! These are for you," he answered more definitely. He stepped forward and handed Felicity the bouquet of colorful flowers. He leaned a little bit, intending to give her a friendly kiss on her left cheek, but he hesitated when he saw her gasp and tense up. As she took the bouquet from him, their hands brushed lightly, and she felt a spark surge from her hand through her arm and to the rest of her body. She didn't know what had gotten into her, but it was as if her own body decided that it had wanted to respond to Oliver's sweet gesture. Her other hand instinctively reached up to touch his shoulder as she leaned into him as she tilted her head and gave him a chaste kiss on his left cheek. It was Oliver's turn to gasp in pleasant surprise.

Felicity quickly turned to hide the blush that was coloring her cheeks crimson. She headed towards her small kitchen as she invited him in. She pulled out a tall crystal vase from one of the utility cabinets, filled it halfway with water, and put the flowers into it. She offered him something to drink, and he asked for a glass of cold water. When she gave it to him, she said, "Thank you for the flowers. They're beautiful."

Oliver wanted to say, "Not half as beautiful as you," but all he could do was smile and nod. He didn't even dare take his other hand out of his pocket for fear that he just might not be able to restrain himself from cupping her cheek and kissing her senseless right then and there. He was absolutely smitten by her. He wondered how on earth he was going to survive the evening with her by his side.

Felicity told him to feel at home as she retrieved her strapless purse from her room and got ready to leave. When she returned, Oliver was seated on the couch, his elbows on his knees. He was holding a black velvet box in his hands.

"I'm all set. Shall we go?" she asked.

Oliver stood up and answered, "Not just yet. I have something else…for you." He smiled at her and came near, handing her the box. "Open it," he urged her.

"What's this?" she asked excitedly as she pried the box open. When she saw what was inside, it was her turn to be speechless and dumbfounded. Like running a search on the computer, Felicity's brain sifted through the memories of all her conversations with Oliver, from her most recent one – which was just the night before when he'd called to remind her that the gala was tonight – and backwards to the time they had first met in class last semester. It took her a couple of seconds to recall a particular incident just outside the ICT library when she had first turned him down; before the parted ways, Oliver had greeted her 'Merry Christmas,' and she had said that she was Jewish. That was months ago, and they had never really had a real conversation about religious stuff since. But he remembered. How thoughtful of him! There, resting in the velvet case was a silver pendant of the Star of David studded with tiny diamonds, attached to an intricately designed, shimmering silver chain. It was exquisite!

Seeing she still had been unable to respond, Oliver initiated, "Do you like it? I had it made for you for Valentine's, but you refused to go out to dinner with me. Remember?"

She nodded gently twice, as her eyes became glassy with tears. She remembered both times she had turned him down just as she remembered how she had told him she was Jewish.

"Is that a 'yes, I remember,' or a 'yes, I like it'?" Oliver clarified.

"Yes, I remember," Felicity said, "and yes, I love it!" She successfully blinked away her tears. "Thank you so much, Oliver. It's beautiful." She took the necklace out of the box and held it in front of her, admiring how the diamonds on the star glittered in the light. "Help me put it on. I think it'll go well with my dress," she requested.

Oliver took the necklace from her as she turned around. He unclasped the chain and moved to place the pendant on her chest. As she held the star down with her fingers just above where her cleavage began to show, he clasped the hooks together and locked them in place. He lingered a bit even if the task took only a couple of seconds to accomplish, because he couldn't resist staring down at the silky smooth, milky white skin of her back, which was left exposed by the backless design of her evening gown. His hands ghosted over her skin, and he felt ecstatic at their closeness. He was standing behind her just inches away. He took one more baby step towards her, leaned down and lightly pressed his cheek against her neck just behind her ear, and whispered, "I'm glad you like it."

And oh, wow, did that send shivers up and down her spine! Felicity's eyes slammed shut as she swallowed hard, fighting back the mixed emotions that threatened to break free. There was pleasure, thrill, and rapture – enough to send her sky-rocketing to the moon. But there was also fear and dread and panic that she was losing control over her safe zone. Her bubble was about to burst, so she had to do something. Fast!

Felicity cleared her throat and said, "Well, we better get going. We don't want to be late to a party at your own family's place, do we?"

And just like that, their moment fell apart. They left the apartment as soon as she turned off the lights and locked the door.

Everything was going smoothly at the charity gala in the Queen mansion. Felicity survived the initial formal introductions. When Oliver and Walter Steele introduced her to Robert and Moira Queen, Felicity was astonished and pleased that the Queen patriarch immediately recognized her as a former QC employee with an impressive service record. Robert Queen even remembered sending her his laptop for repair when it had crashed once. He was jovial and nice to her, and so was his wife Moira. Moira had extended a warm handshake to her, happy to have finally met the remarkable woman that her son, her daughter, and her grandson have been bragging about for a few months now. To all the other guests that night, Oliver had introduced her as IT expert extraordinaire, as a university professor close to finishing her doctorate, and as his former teacher. But to his parents, he had introduced her as his "very dear friend, Felicity Smoak." That alone delighted her heart in more ways than one.

Oliver didn't leave Felicity's side throughout the night. He was sensitive enough to consider that she might not want to be left alone, even just for a moment, to deal with anyone she didn't know. He had already gotten her to be his date for the night, even if he knew she had made an exception to come for his sake. His hand rested on the small of her back the entire evening, much to her satisfaction, except the time when he took her to the dance floor and swayed her to the light, classic jazz music played by the brass quintet. She didn't complain about that, though, because his arm had been around her waist the whole time, drawing her close to him. When Moonlight Serenade played, any remaining distance between them disappeared, as she rested her cheek on his chest and listened to the steady beating of his heart. Oliver, in turn, rested his cheek on the golden crown of her head. Everything else had either faded away or had been zoned out. It was just the music. And them. Together.

Felicity already had a couple of glasses of red wine, and she was just about to have her third one poured at the open bar when guests began to take leave. She was glad she didn't have to go for another glass anymore; she was beginning to feel a little tipsy. When Oliver asked her if she wanted to go home, she said yes politely. After saying the proper farewells to his family and the remaining guests, he drove her back to her apartment on campus.

Oliver walked her up to her apartment, again holding her hand. When they stepped off the elevator and started walking down the hallway towards her unit, Felicity's heart began to race. What would be the best way to cap a wonderful evening with a wonderful man? She hadn't really thought about that before. A handshake? Too formal, too distant. A hug? He isn't her uncle or her cousin, she thought. A kiss on the cheek? She felt a bit reluctant, considering how awkward that had made her feel earlier when he came to pick her up in the apartment. On the lips maybe? Ugh! What if he made a move to kiss her? Would she kiss him back? Should she invite him in for a nightcap? Maybe not a good idea seeing that they were still just friends.

A web of what ifs and what nows clouded her mind as they stopped in front of her door. Felicity was rattled. She had no clue what to do. Oh for heaven's sake! She was a forty-year-old woman! How could she panic about this? It's not like she hadn't kissed or been kissed by a man before. She grew anxious by the second.

Unknown to her, Oliver was feeling the same way and thinking almost the same things. He had had a fabulous evening with Felicity, and he definitely wanted to kiss her goodnight. What he wasn't sure of was whether or not she was ready for it. They hadn't really talked about where they were exactly in their relationship. He was sure they were friends, and he would like to think that they were more than just friends, but he didn't want to presume. He just didn't know what she expected from him before he called it a night.

Oliver racked his brain for answers. He tried to get reason to help him out, but with a gorgeously stunning woman standing right next to him, reason wasn't as potent as he would have liked it to be. He tried to cull from his past years of dating experience and come up with something that might help. But all he came up with was that he really needed to go back to the basics of wooing a woman, because this one was definitely, positively worth it.

He didn't know exactly what happened. She didn't either. Everything that happened between the moment they stopped in front of her door and the moment they started kissing on her couch had been a blur. Maybe it was all the alcohol they had consumed, maybe it was their nerves, or maybe they just got tired of dancing around the feelings that they perceptibly had for each other for some time now. Whether it was one or all of these factors put together, one thing was certain: things were heating up and happening so fast, and neither Oliver nor Felicity seemed to realize that they had to do something to stop the wreck that two hungry and lonely souls were recklessly speeding towards.

Oliver ran his hands up and down her upper arms, squeezing every now and then as he deepened the kiss. Felicity welcomed this, responded by reclining on one end of the couch and cupping his scruffy jaw with one hand while clutching his dress shirt with her other hand. But when Oliver began to caress her hip, something in Felicity snapped. An intense apprehension and impulse to protect herself broke her out of a state of ecstasy. The vivid image of Cooper Seldon flashed in her mind like an unwelcome trigger, making her push Oliver away instantaneously.

"I'm sorry! I… I can't do this!" she cried.

"What's wrong?" Oliver asked, agitated and worried at her sudden change of mood. He tried to calm her down by rubbing circles on her arms.

"Please, just… just go. I'm so sorry, Oliver. I really am," Felicity pleaded, tears now rolling down her cheeks like rivers. Her voice quivered too, and she couldn't hide her regret from him any longer.

Oliver asked very softly and slowly, "Talk to me, Felicity. What's the matter? Did I do something to hurt you? Tell me, please."

"No. No, it's… it's not you," she replied, shaking her head vigorously. "Oliver, please, just leave me alone. Please go," she begged, crying bitterly like a child afraid of being punished for something wrong she'd done.

"Felicity, please. I want to help, and I can't do that if you won't let me." Oliver tried to persuade her one more time. "You know you can trust me, right?"

"Y-yes… but… but you can't trust ME!" Felicity cringed as she closed her eyes shut, her face contorting in disgust. She pushed Oliver further away as she pressed herself backwards against the couch and away from him. She reached for a throw pillow and clung to it for dear life. She needed so much to be as far away from him as possible.

"What? What do you mean?" he asked. Oliver was so confused. Felicity seemed terribly afraid of something, and yet she was saying that she's the one who cannot be trusted.

"Please just go. I can't do this. Whatever this is…" She paused, pointing back and forth between her and Oliver. "Whatever it is that we have? It can't happen. I'm so sorry, Oliver. I'm so, so sorry. My life is a huge mess. I'm a mess! And I can't drag you into this. I'm not ready. I don't think I will ever be. I just… I just can't!" The dam broke and the words Felicity let loose like rambling that's out of control puzzled Oliver even more.

He reached out for her hand, but she flinched. When he tried to do it a second time, she swatted his hand away. She clearly didn't want him touching her anymore. Oliver was at his wit's end, and felt totally frustrated that he couldn't help her. He was perturbed that she wouldn't even let him help her.

"Please, Oliver… just leave!" she pleaded once more.

Oliver didn't want to cause her more pain than she was already struggling with, so he backed away and stood up from the couch. With his head hung low, he picked up his suit jacket from the coffee table, turned towards the door, and left.

On the short drive from her apartment building's parking lot, through university grounds, and until he parked his car in his own apartment building, Oliver couldn't put the puzzle pieces together. What had he done that elicited such a troubled response from her? All she had to do was tell him if she hadn't wanted them making out on the couch like overgrown teenagers. He would have understood, and he would have respected her wishes.

Oliver also began to realize that maybe he should have taken things more slowly; after all, they were just friends as of yet. Well, obviously they had both felt that something was definitely changing in their relationship; otherwise, they wouldn't have consented mutually to kissing as passionately as they had. Perhaps she just wasn't ready to take their relationship to a deeper level. He mentally scolded himself for crossing the line too soon and disregarding the boundaries Felicity had set for herself. But how could he have known what those boundaries were? How would he learn them now, when she had made him leave? Ollie Queen and his foolish, childish, self-gratifying ways were things of the past, but how could he make her understand and believe that? How could he redeem himself in her eyes now?

Oliver struggled with those questions, but what baffled him more was that, even in her anxious attempt to protect herself, Felicity had managed to somehow blame herself. What had happened to her in the past that caused her to be this way? Had she been hurt? Had she hurt someone? This was a mystery that Oliver was determined to unravel, because Felicity mattered to him. He cared about her, so much so that he will stop at nothing to help her sort out the mess she spoke of, whether or not they ended up together. At that moment, it dawned on him that sometime in the last six months, he had begun to truly love Felicity Smoak.

The following day and the days after that, Oliver called her, but she didn't pick up or call him back. He texted her, but she didn't reply. After a week, he got a text from her letting him know that she was spending spring break in Vegas with her mother, and that when she came back, he could see her again… if he can promise that they would just remain friends.

Oliver Queen. Friend-zoned. Frustrated.

Perhaps it was too late for them after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry if this chapter ends with you feeling just as frustrated and confused as Oliver is. I promise this will lead up to an HEA, so bear with me. 
> 
> Do let me know what you think of this update. Reviews and comments make my day, and help fuel the inspiration to write. Just two more chapters to go. Thank you once again for reading!


	4. Back to Square One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath: Oliver and Felicity feel the effects of the disappointing fallout on the night of the gala. They're back to square one, but they unexpectedly get help.

Oliver spent the last thirty minutes staring at the digital spreadsheet on his computer monitor and not accomplishing any of the work he had set out to do for the shop's accounts that day. Just like yesterday, and the day before, and the days before that, there had been no drive to work or study like there used to be.

It had been almost two weeks since Felicity got back from Vegas, but he hadn't gone to see her. Not even once. He had texted her three times to ask how she was doing, and she had replied each time, albeit with short, simple messages like "I'm fine" or "I'm doing okay," which didn't really tell him much except that she probably didn't miss him as much as he missed her. And terribly so.

Before she left for spring break (that is, after the disappointing night when she begged him to leave her apartment at the height of a passionate-moment-gone-mysteriously-wrong) she had texted him that he could see her when she returned only if he promised that they would just remain friends. That was a promise he knew he couldn't keep. He respected her wishes, but he couldn't do what she asked of him. He wasn't willing to. Sure, he could still hang out with her, go running in the park or walking with her on the boardwalk, and pretend that it's okay with him for them to just be friends. But it wouldn't be the truth.

He remembered what he had said before when he was still trying to get her to go on a first date with him – that he was willing to try to ask her out one more time, and if she declined again, he wouldn't mind simply being friends. That wasn't the case anymore. No, not after all the time he'd spent getting to know her more and liking what he's discovered about her so far. Not after sweet-tooth afternoons and coffee cup conversations that opened up their hearts to each other in ways he had only dreamed of in the past two years of grief. How could he just stay friends with her after experiencing first-hand how breathtaking it felt to hold her tiny, tender hands; to press his lips against her soft, sweet lips; and to caress her smooth, supple arms as her fingers combed through his hair?

But it had been more than just physical attraction. Oliver was certain that he had gained a best friend in her, which was something he had not had since Tommy Merlyn moved away when he and Laurel had gotten married more than fifteen years ago. Oliver's late wife had been the closest person he's had to a best friend all these years, and when he lost her suddenly, his world had caved in, leaving a gaping hole in his aching heart. Felicity made him smile and laugh again despite the regrets of the past. She made him get up from bed every morning, believing once again in the beauty of life, present tense. She gave him a glimpse of what a hopeful future could be even for a forty-something widower like him. She made him feel again. Love again. In fact, Oliver realized that falling in love with Felicity was nothing like he'd ever experienced in his life. Not with Laurel, and not even with Sandra. He was sure that Felicity Smoak was it for him. He was crazy about her, and it felt amazing! Oliver was convinced that Felicity was the one who would fill up that empty space in his life, and he was ready to build a deeper level of commitment on the foundation of friendship that they had established in the past few months. He wanted her so much to be more than just his friend.

That was why it had hurt that she found it so easy to put a damper on their relationship without so much as an explanation, and with a condition that put him in a very tight spot. It hurt because he felt that it wasn't fair for her to have friend-zoned him and just left him in the dark without anything to hold on to. To someone like Oliver, who had already lost a partner in life once, committing to someone and then losing that person altogether wasn't an option anymore. It was just too painful. It was all or nothing. If he couldn't be with Felicity, then he shouldn't see her anymore. It was that simple.

Except, it really was not. Because Oliver's life had already become complicated the day Felicity Smoak walked into his life.

Everything pretty much maintained status quo for the next couple of weeks. Their text messages became more and more infrequent, especially since Felicity became very busy revising and finalizing her doctoral thesis on cyber-security and preparing for her dissertation defense. He wished he could be with her in the process, cheering her on to completion and success. With each passing day, his longing for her intensified and affected him. Thea had teased him more than once for being a pathetic, lovesick forty-three-year-old, who by now should know better than to sulk.

He was lovesick, alright, and quite literally so. He missed her so much it literally made him sick. Twice, Connor was the one that helped his Aunt Thea close shop because he had horrible migraines that lasted throughout the night and kept him from jogging in the morning. His sleep hours shortened as he pined for Felicity and on one occasion even dreamed about her leaving Starling and going back to Vegas for good; he woke up with a slight fever.

His studies were also affected, and his grades were going down a precarious path that he contemplated dropping two of his major subjects rather than flunk them, but Connor had talked some sense into him, telling him that dropping would only delay finishing his degree on time. His son cheered him on, helping him to cope with requirements while he nursed a broken heart.

One afternoon when there weren't so many people in the coffee shop, Oliver shared with Thea that he had been contemplating on moving back to Central City for good and opening another branch of Connor's Brew near Central City College because of the success the shop had become in such a location. He challenged Thea to run the Starling City branch on her own with the help of Connor, since his son was graduating by the end of May. When Thea asked him what prompted this sudden urge to move away (even if she already knew what the answer would be), Oliver confessed how much it hurt to stay so close to Felicity and yet not be with her or even see her. Thea wisely told him not to make hasty decisions just because of his heartbreak with Felicity.

In the days that followed Connor and Thea encouraged Oliver not to give up. They told him that if he really didn't want to see her because he couldn't live with the condition she had set, then he should try other means to get through to her. They suggested that since coffee and red velvet had worked before, there was no harm in trying once again. Oliver thought that if all else failed, he could move away without the stigma of not having exhausted every possible way to win back her heart.

So, after close to two months of not seeing Felicity, Oliver decided he was going to try again. He had learned that Felicity spent most afternoons and evenings either in the IT library or in her office working on her dissertation; Oliver thought that she deserved to take a break every once in a while and indulge in sugar overloads considering the long hours she puts into teaching classes all day and then preparing for her dissertation defense after work hours. So, he sent her coffee or hot cocoa and freshly baked treats from time to time, courtesy of Connor or the coffee shop's delivery guy. He refrained from sending her any messages to go with the treats, so as not to distract her from focusing on her tasks. He didn't know what to write anyway, so he might as well not.

One day in the first week of May, Connor returned to the shop at around closing time with a naughty grin on his face. "Dad, she says thanks for the cinnamon rolls and the espresso," Connor said to Oliver. "And she asked me to give you this." Connor handed him a folded sheet of stationery with the university logo, which he immediately opened and read:

"Dear Oliver, thanks for coffee and all the sweet stuff. Tomorrow is my dissertation defense. Say a little prayer for me, will you? Still your friend, Felicity."

Oliver smiled as his heart raced in exhilaration. At one of the most important milestones in her life, she had still thought about him. She chose to share an important event in her life with him. That meant that she trusted him and counted him as someone important in her life, too. He felt his heart enveloped by a comforting warmth that he couldn't fully understand.

At that moment, Oliver realized that he had been wrong all this time. Well, not entirely. But, a little of Felicity in his life – even if just as a friend – although not ideal, was so…. so much better than none. He really missed her, and he was going to stop wallowing and brooding over her right that instant. He told himself that if he and she were truly meant to be, they'd end up together eventually. So what was he afraid of? What did he have to lose? He wanted her in his life, yearned for her like she were his last breath, but if all she was ready for was friendship, then that's what he was going to give her. Because he cared about her, and caring meant that he ought to be willing to lay down his own desires for her good. Because he had come to love her, and love is all about wanting and giving what is best for the other instead of wanting and taking what would satisfy his own need for companionship and intimacy. He realized that it didn't matter what their relationship was called as long as he had one with her, because for as long as she was in his life, he'd be happy. He'd wait for her to be ready, and when she is, he'll be right there; it didn't matter how old he or she would be by then.

Oliver was confident that she would pass her dissertation defense tomorrow with flying colors, and he was going to be there to congratulate her personally and celebrate with his very dear friend.

****************************

John Diggle was a loyal and reliable friend that Felicity Smoak could always rely on. They had been good friends way back when they were still both employed in Queen Consolidated – she in IT and he in security. John had left two years prior to her resignation, taking a better offer as the head of security in Starling City University just a year after he had married his long-time girlfriend Lyla Michaels. When Felicity started her master's degree on a scholarship there, being close to his friends had been one of the welcome perks to her back-to-school life.

John and Lyla had encouraged the Olicity ship from the very beginning. John told Lyla early on that they'd be good for each other. Yet still, John's watchful eyes were reserved not just for campus security but also for the welfare of their beautiful blonde friend. He had observed how the city's most eligible widower had taken special notice of Felicity and had been completely silent about it – except with his wife – until Felicity had asked for advice about whether or not she should follow through with being Oliver's date for QC's charity gala. He had lurked in the shadows, ever so discreetly, making sure she wasn't being toyed with by a man who had been a womanizer in his adolescent years. He was a little bit wary that she might be the object of rebound affections of a lonely man who had been mourning the loss of his wife. John's vigilance and tactful background scrutiny had led him to believe two things over the past several months: one, that the reformed Queen heir had been completely faithful to his late wife; and two, that while the middle-aged widower had truly been lonely since his wife's demise, he had surely fallen insanely in love with their friend. "Who wouldn't?" Lyla had remarked, one time they were talking over dinner about Felicity being a prized catch for any decent bachelor. The more they saw their friend spending time with Oliver, the happier and brighter she had become. They'd been more than happy for her to have found someone special. Again. They knew their friend had endured some very tough times.

When Felicity came back from spring break, they noticed the changes in her. Outwardly, she was still the same bubbly, brilliant blonde genius, flashing a winsome smile to everybody around her, thoroughly focused on her job and committed to making a difference in the lives of young people, but also, putting up a façade and pretending that she was okay even if she was hurting on the inside. Only close friends like them noticed the sadness and loneliness deep in her eyes and the more serious undercurrents of some flippant remarks she made whenever she was asked how she or her day was.

John and Lyla had known something was wrong, and they were sure that it had something to do with the handsome former student who was no longer seeing her on a regular basis. In his daily rounds on campus, John had seen Oliver quite a few times wandering around in the ICT building as if waiting to run into her unexpectedly. Twice John saw him retreating as soon as he saw Felicity's ponytail in a crowd of students from afar. After a movie night with their friend, Lyla had asked John why he thought Felicity hadn't been talking much about Oliver lately, so he shared with his wife what he knew and they talked about what they could do to help their friend.

On a casual conversation over Sunday lunch with Felicity, they broached the subject cautiously and tactfully. Surprisingly, Felicity readily admitted to the sudden fallout with Oliver, confessing to her friends how relieved she was that she was finally able to talk to someone about how miserable she had been since spring break. She told them what happened the night of the gala. When she got to the part when Oliver walked out the door of her apartment, she burst into tears in front of her trusted friends, babbling about how she missed Oliver so much and about how she regretted making him leave the very next day, and then a week later, giving him a stupid condition for seeing her again. In between sniffles and sobs, she rambled on about how she thought she was a certified nut case and about her fears of not ever finding someone to spend the rest of her messed-up life with.

John's and Lyla's hearts went out to their friend. They totally understood where she was coming from. They both knew that they really couldn't blame her for being scared of being in another relationship, considering how traumatizing her first and last relationship had been more than a decade ago. But she had come a long way since, and they believed that life still had so much in store for Felicity, a friend they truly cared about and loved so much.

Which was why they agreed it was time for them to do something… helpful, perhaps a gentle nudge in the right direction. They walked into Connor's Brew one afternoon with their five-year-old daughter Sara, hoping to see for themselves if Oliver looked just as miserable and forlorn as their friend, before they decided what to do and when to act. They didn't intend to actually meet Oliver or get to know him personally; they just wanted to observe, to at least have a feel of how the man was faring compared to Felicity. But they agreed that if the opportunity presented itself, they wouldn't hesitate to introduce themselves as Felicity's friends, because that would be a pretty good chance to see how he would react at the mere mention of her name.

The opportunity did present itself. Coming out of the kitchen to check on customers, Oliver immediately recognized John as someone he frequently saw on campus wearing a special uniform and a name plate that designated him as security, smiling politely at him every time. Oliver introduced himself and asked if John indeed worked for the university. John confirmed it and introduced his wife and daughter. They shook hands, Lyla quickly complimenting Oliver for the delicious cheesecakes and the pleasant ambiance of the coffee shop, and Oliver thanked her for the kind words. Admiring Oliver's pleasant demeanor, Lyla could not resist the urge to speak on. She told Oliver that they were friends of Felicity, who had, on more than one occasion, recommended Connor's Brew for their dining pleasure. And there it was – the sparkle in his eyes at the mention of the blonde's name. But that gleam swiftly faded as he said, "Well, if you happen to see Felicity around, please tell her I said hello." As soon as Oliver excused himself from their table, John and Lyla knew their hunch was right: he longed for her just as badly as she longed for him.

John and Lyla had planned on playing the role of matchmakers, but they ended up being eavesdroppers as well. While enjoying their coffee and cheesecakes, they happened to overhear Oliver conversing with a slender, smart-looking brunette whom John assumed was his younger sister Thea that Felicity had told them about quite a few times. They heard him tell his sister that he planned to move back to Central City for good to put up another branch of the coffee shop there. Lyla, whose back was turned against the Queen siblings, looked at John with widened eyes that clearly asked, "What are we going to do?" Her husband just pursed his lips and kept quiet. As they both listened in, they heard firsthand Oliver's confession to his sister that the real reason why he wanted to move away was that it hurt so much for him to be physically near Felicity and yet be so far away from her emotionally. He couldn't handle just being her friend because he was ready to be more, if she'd only let him. Puppy dog eyes and pouting lips appeared on Lyla's face, and John had to glare at his wife to tell her to keep it together.

Lyla did keep it together until they made their way back home with a take-home bag of sweet treats for Sara. Before they retired for the night, she told John that they needed to do something before Felicity loses a wonderful man like Oliver and misses her chance at having a genuine and lasting romance. John shook his head, muttering in a low voice, "I don't know, honey. It's not our place to pry. Oliver and Felicity are fully grown adults. They're old enough not to have people meddling in their affairs."

"Johnny," Lyla retorted, "they might be old enough, but they're obviously not brave and bold enough to take the next step to overcome their fears and apprehensions. And it's not like we're meddling, we're… we're just… pointing them to the right direction."

"Shoving, is more like it," John replied in distaste.

"O come on, John! They're lovesick forty-year-olds who need a little coaxing! They've gone through so much already as individuals, and they need each other to see that life can still be beautiful in spite of. A little help here and a little encouragement there won't hurt," Lyla reasoned.

John had to agree. His wife was right, he thought. Felicity and Oliver needed each other and cared about each other. John could definitely see love blossoming and growing between them. He wanted them to experience the same joy that he and Lyla shared, and more. He had a plan, and his wife was in on it, but they needed reinforcements.

John kept an eye out for Connor Queen in the school of business, introduced himself as an acquaintance of his father and a very good friend of Felicity. He didn't have to give too much effort to get the young man on board with their matchmaking plans. As soon as Connor heard Felicity's name, the young man's face brightened, showing how interested he was that John approached him about Felicity. Connor revealed that it had been his idea all along for his father to meet Ms. Smoak, because one semester in her class had been enough reason for him to think that she was the perfect match for his dad. Connor also told John that the current status of his father's relationship with her was quite disappointing, and that he felt bad seeing his dad so miserably pining for her. They spent a good ten minutes conversing about how the two lovebirds needed help to sort out their issues and their feelings, sharing a good laugh or two over hilarious incidents when the two supposedly grown-up adults they cared about had acted like hormonally driven teenagers during the time they grew closer and also during the time they were apart. It took them only one minute to agree that they were going to help each other bring the two back together. Connor even assured John that his Aunt Thea would be more than thrilled to participate in their secret matchmaking mission.

In the days that ensued, Connor and Thea kept their end of the bargain, encouraging Oliver to persevere and egging him to try and win Felicity's heart again, until Oliver finally decided to act. John fed Connor and Thea the information as to where Felicity might be or what she might be doing on a given day so that Oliver would know where to send her favorite beverages and goodies. From their end, John and Lyla continued to support Felicity during one of the most stressful times in her life – hurdling the requirements for the completion of her doctorate program while dealing with her unresolved issues and the yearning that she had for Oliver, which she was still afraid to act upon.

When John mentioned to Felicity that he and Lyla had finally taken her recommendation about Connor's Brew seriously and met Oliver personally on their first visit, her face lit up like Christmas. With curiosity that she couldn't hide, she asked John bashfully, "How is he?" John told her that while Oliver's business was doing quite well, the man seemed paradoxically happy and sad when they had introduced themselves as her friends. John told her that Oliver said hello, adding that the man seemed to really miss her, judging from his body language and facial expression. John could have told Felicity about overhearing Oliver telling Thea that he planned to move back to Central City, but he didn't. He knew where to draw the line between helping and meddling, and he didn't think it wise to manipulate things between their good friend and the man she was obviously in love with, no matter how much he wanted their relationship to get back on track. John and Lyla tried their best to comfort Felicity on days when the loneliness was felt the hardest. They offered sound advice openly when she asked for it, and discreetly when she needed it. But they knew that in the end, pursuing a meaningful relationship with Oliver really was her decision to make.

On the day Felicity sent Oliver the short but positively toned note the day before her dissertation defense, texts with smiling and cheering emoticons were exchanged among Connor, Thea, John, and Lyla. Somehow they got through to their friends and loved ones after all. Mission accomplished, they all thought. The rest was up to Oliver and Felicity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what did you think? Would you have been on board with the matchmaking plan if you were in their shoes?
> 
> Some of you might still be waiting for the explanation behind Felicity's extreme reaction to intimacy. That will be revealed in the next chapter from her point of view, because really, it's her story to tell. That would be the final chapter; I'm not yet sure whether or not there will be an epilogue.
> 
> Comments and reviews are very much appreciated.


	5. Back in Each Other's Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's behavior the night of the gala when Oliver had to walk away is explained by her back story. She and Oliver reconnect and stumble back into each other's arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This final chapter is a chapter of revelations, mostly from Felicity's point of view. I believe this is what most of you who have been following this story have been waiting for. So here it is... Enjoy!

The alarm she had set the night before went off at 6:00 a.m. sharp, and for the first time in weeks since spring break, Felicity was excited to get up. She dashed to the bathroom to brush her teeth and went in for a quick shower, humming one of her recent favorite tunes as she lathered peach-scented body wash on her skin. She normally showered after her morning run, but that day, she didn't mind showering twice – before and after her jogging date with Oliver.

Yes, Oliver.

He had come to her dissertation defense the day before, and his warm smile greeting her when she left the conference room had been the perfect ending to a grueling yet successful academic exercise – the last requirement she had to comply to before she would be conferred the title of "Doctor." He had been waiting for more than an hour just outside the conference room where her defense had been held, pacing back and forth in the corridor. He had looked so adorable in his black jeans and grey Henley shirt, his scruff freshly trimmed, holding flowers in one hand, and a bright fuchsia foil balloon with the word "congratulations" and a trophy embossed on it in his other hand. Seeing him there had made her feel like a child watching fireworks on New Year's Eve for the first time.

He'd been there for her. She still couldn't get over it, even after they celebrated her achievement at Connor's Brew with Connor, Thea, John, Lyla, and little Sara over freshly brewed coffee and generous servings of chocolate ban-apple pie. He had been there for her, and she didn't have the heart to turn him down when he asked if they could run together again starting the next day.

More than a month ago, she would have regretted that decision. She most probably wouldn't even have said yes in the first place. It didn't mean that she wouldn't have felt miserable about it. She really, really liked Oliver. A lot!

Before he walked away the night of the gala, Felicity had already begun wishing that they would be more than just friends, and she had been thinking through the reasons why that was so. She was sure that it wasn't just because she was attracted to him, which was something that she had already learned to accept and embrace without feeling embarrassed. (Because, really now, what woman in her right mind wouldn't find Oliver Queen drop-dead gorgeous even at forty-three?!)

Felicity thought that Oliver was a wonderful man, mature and seasoned by life's challenges and by the tough choices he's had to make through the years. He was the exact antithesis of the billionaire-playboy that he had been before his father decided that enough was enough. He was kind and thoughtful, honest and gentle, and always considerate of others. He wasn't a genius with a pile of degrees to boast of, but he knew how to work hard, and he put his heart and mind into things that mattered in life, such as family and a future – which were the things that began to matter to her recently, the only things that were missing in her life, and the very things she thought she was willing to share with him for the rest of her life.

Family. Felicity had had a happy one until she was six years old. Before her father abandoned her and her mother Donna, she had a wonderful childhood. Her father had been there at the end of the every day, helping her with cool school stuff and teaching her everything he knew about computers before she learned how to learn all by herself with the help of books and the Internet. They had so many things in common – an above-average intelligence being the most salient trait. Her mother had also been there for them all day every day, minding their needs and managing the house, filling their seriously geeky lives with sunshine and laughter. But one fateful day her father left without so much as a farewell kiss, never to return. Felicity's world crumbled, and she spent the rest of her childhood and her teen years blaming herself for his absence. She was devastated and severely traumatized.

For many years, Felicity couldn't accept that mother-and-daughter was a family. Donna Smoak persevered, working three jobs just to keep them afloat, sacrificing quality time with her growing daughter to earn just a little bit more to cover rent, food, utilities, their basic needs, and to finance the education of a brilliant daughter whom she believed deserved a better chance at life. With her father gone permanently and her mother gone almost all day every day, Felicity had no choice but to learn how to survive on her own, hiding behind a tough-girl, aggressive front that had seen her through high school and secured her a college degree at MIT. She couldn't remember how it was to have a family, and she wondered what it would be like to have one of her own… with Oliver Queen… hopefully in the near future.

Future. Felicity was well aware that half of her life was gone. Her past had been like a bad dream, and her present was like a medically-induced coma. Sure, she was beautiful and brilliant (and she knew it). She had superior education and training. She had an impressive track record and work experience. She had a job that she was proud of doing. But she was also forty and alone.

What kind of life was waiting for her as a spinster? In just about a decade or maybe less, she would enter into menopause. She'd start having terrible mood swings, unpredictable hot flashes, and erratic blood pressure, and soon her OB would be placing her on hormone replacement therapy. Just the thought of that frightens her. Would a guy even consider dating someone that's already headed downhill? Oliver would, she thought. But would Oliver still want her when her breasts and her ass begin to sag like deflated balloons? Would he still find her desirable when her golden locks turn silver-grey, when the wrinkles on her forehead and the chicken feet at the corners of her eyes can no longer be concealed with makeup? And even if he and she ended up together, would they still have a shot at having even just one child? Felicity was well aware that her biological clock was ticking fast, counting down to her last few years of possibility, which was one of the significant reasons why she had bravely allowed herself to develop feelings for Oliver and let their friendship to grow. This was aside from the fact that she had seen in him the very qualities that she considered to be non-negotiable in a very-near-future husband the moment she decided that she wanted out of the safe but sad world she had built herself.

Husband. Yes, husband. As her fortieth birthday had drawn near, Felicity had wondered what it would be like for her to settle down with the right guy for the right reasons, and she had decided that if she ever came to the point of meeting that person, she was going to make it very clear that she wasn't looking for a fling or mere boyfriend material. She was looking for someone to commit to for the years that remained in her life. She was too old – no, mature is the better word – for fleeting romances and childish break-ups over petty differences. If she was going to take the risk of loving again and giving her heart away one more time, that someone better be worth it, and she might as well commit to that relationship all the way to the altar. At this point in her life, she had felt that she had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

For many years Felicity had convinced herself that being single was best, and she had gotten used to the safety and security of withdrawing into that comfort zone. She had been fearful, anxious, and suspicious of anyone or anything that might burst the bubble of aloneness that she had been comfortable in. Yet ever since she met Oliver, something inside her had awakened – the desire to be with someone special, the yearning to love and be loved. He had stirred up that longing within her, and she couldn't shake it off even if she wanted to. Because she didn't want to. After months of getting to know him better, she wanted to be with him, to try being in a relationship again, and she was only waiting for the right opportunity to let him know.

In the beginning, she had been too scared to try that she had managed to deny her growing affections for him; she had promised herself that she would never cross the line between being friends and being lovers. However, the more she spent time with Oliver, the more she experienced what it meant to be cared for, loved, and desired. The more they got to know each other and did things together, the deeper her fondness of him and her feelings for him grew. The more he showed her kindness and affection, the more she responded with admiration and respect. She had somehow been able to keep those responses buried in her subconscious, to keep her emotions at bay, and to keep herself from initiating any serious talk about the status of their relationship. But on the night of the gala – after he placed that diamond-studded Star of David pendant around her neck and brushed her nape with his fingers, after he swayed her lithely in his arms on the dance floor, and finally when he kissed her good night at her doorstep with his hands cupping her face – the dam had broken, and she had let go.

Felicity let go of her fears and her inhibitions and reveled in that moment. She kissed him back and let him envelope her in his firm yet loving arms. She put her arms around his neck and invited him in for a nightcap. She was going to tell him over a glass of red wine, but one thing had led to another, and they found themselves on the couch, enjoying the onset of making out as if they were twenty years younger. It had been long time since Oliver had kissed a woman that way, and much, much longer since Felicity had been similarly kissed and touched by a man. They had both been lonely for so long, and they hungered for that kind of intimacy. And so, at the heat of the moment, they were oblivious to everything else but the rush of an insanely splendid mixture of pleasurable sensations and intense emotions. Everything was happening so fast, and they were both unraveling and losing themselves in each other. They had thrown caution to the wind and forgot about any notion of restraint and responsibility that had characterized their growth into mature adults through the years – and that, without having talked about where their relationship was headed yet.

Auspiciously, before they had crossed the point of no return and did something they both would regret, an unexpected move triggered Felicity's trauma and snuffed out the flame that had been ignited between them. Oliver's hands had traveled down from her arms to her hips and when he had begun to caress her there, she suddenly pulled back and pushed him away. Calling it anticlimactic was certainly an understatement for both of them. For Oliver, it had been definitely frustrating and confusing. For Felicity, it had been upsetting and unnerving – a temptation to regress to her old, self-preserving strategies for coping with life's harsh realities.

She had spent days and weeks thinking about what had happened that night. She turned it over and over again in her mind, analyzing and over-analyzing it until her head hurt. It wasn't until she had mustered the courage to open up to Caitlyn and talk things through (after she had broken down in tears in front of John and Lyla) that she finally admitted why what happened had happened.

The only hands that had ever caressed her hips had been Cooper Seldon's, and he was the only man that had ever known her intimately. He was her first and only real relationship, and before she met Oliver, she had persuaded herself that he was the last. Rubbing circles on her hips while kissing her passionately had been Cooper's signature move that had her yielding each time to his hints that she satisfy his manly urges.

At the time, Felicity had constantly struggled with guilt for turning her back on her values. Donna Smoak was a cocktail waitress in Vegas who got in and out of relationships like she was changing clothes, but she had raised her daughter with dignity and the values of the Jewish faith that her parents and grandparents had passed on to her and that she had taken lightly. Donna believed that her daughter was precious and special, and that her daughter deserved a better life than the one she had wasted early on when she gave herself completely to Noah Kuttler, who later on abandoned her and her daughter.

Back then, Felicity had gone back to school after working for a year at Palmer Technologies at Central City. (She had left her job when she found out that her boss, Ray Palmer, had only started seeing her to make his ex-girlfriend Anna jealous.) She then had started her master's degree program at MIT on a scholarship and soon had fallen madly in love with her professor, who was only a year older than she was, and who was the only man she had ever met that exceeded her expectations and came to par with her own brilliance and intelligence. She had craved the attention Cooper had given her, and that took precedence over any moral code that she had previously set for herself. She had rationalized her love affair with Cooper, thinking that she deserved to be happy for once, having been deprived of love and attention ever since her father had vanished from her life. She had thought that her relationship with her graduate school mentor was filling that void inside her, even when her gut kept nagging that something wasn't quite right with Cooper. Even if her mind kept scolding her that what she was doing wasn't right.

Felicity's romantic relationship with Cooper had lasted for almost two years, and she had started to wonder when he would propose. She was on her last semester of graduate school when she found out that he was married. The young Mrs. Seldon had knocked on the door of her dorm room the day before midterm exams were supposed to start, balancing on her hip a two-year-old boy who was the splitting image of Cooper. The red-haired woman had introduced herself and had confronted Felicity about the illicit love affair with her husband. The woman yelled at Felicity and called her ugly names. She spitefully accused Felicity of destroying her family and threatened to file a complaint against her at the Office for Student Affairs for seduction and immoral behavior if Felicity did not immediately end the affair with her husband.

Felicity had been shocked. Cooper had been cheating on his wife and kid with her for close to two years! How could she not have known?! Felicity had tried to explain to the young Mrs. Seldon that she was unaware that Cooper was married, but the red hair wouldn't believe her. For days she had cried herself to sleep and sometimes spaced out while attending class.

Felicity had also been utterly humiliated. Her roommate had looked at her differently from then on, and every girl on that floor that had heard the Seldon woman's screaming and cursing gossiped about her even when she was merely an earshot away in the dorm or at other places on campus. The star student of the ICT department had become the subject of nasty rumors, which, thankfully, had not escalated to the point where someone would have reported the indecent affair to school authorities resulting in the revocation of her scholarship and a dishonorable dismissal.

Felicity had hated herself. She had wallowed in guilt and self-blame. She couldn't believe that she had stooped so low as to be someone's mistress. She berated herself for falling for Cooper's charms without even checking up on his background, for being blind to the telltale signs that he wasn't being totally honest with her, and for believing in all the lies and lame excuses why they couldn't go on dates as much or be seen together in public, especially on campus, in the guise of teacher-student propriety. She successfully convinced herself that the scandal was all her fault. After all, she had the ability and the means to look into Cooper's personal life. Simple cyber-sleuthing would have done the trick. But she had chosen to trust him when she dove into the relationship heart first, thinking that going behind his back was a breach of that trust. She was dead wrong, and she regretted it with all her might. She'd been the "other woman," and Cooper had a little boy, for crying out loud! The man didn't even care to explain himself and had never apologized for what he'd done.

Felicity spiraled down into depression and dropped out of MIT's masters program. She cut off all ties with Cooper and with all her friends. She went home to Vegas and lived with her mother again, which was a clear indication of how desperate she had been, because she had sworn to herself after high school graduation that she would only resort to go back to Las Vegas and stay with her mother if, and only if, she had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. She stayed with her mother for two years while she recovered emotionally and psychologically from the trauma, taking odd jobs and short-term projects in and around the city as a free lance IT specialist. It took her that long to regain some degree of self-confidence, but with Donna by her side, patiently and lovingly encouraging her and cheering her on, Felicity was eventually able to bounce back and find the strength and boldness to pursue her ICT profession once again.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, she applied for an entry-level position in the IT department of Queen Consolidated and was immediately hired by none other than Robert Queen himself. She picked up the pieces of her broken heart, packed her bags, kissed her mother goodbye for the third time, and moved to Starling City, hoping for a fresh start. After ten years of outstanding work experience in a Fortune 500 company followed by two years of graduate studies in Starling City University and three years of teaching in the ICT department, Felicity Smoak thought that she had gotten her life back.

She thought she had moved on. She thought she had healed. She had even dared to take a step of faith by letting Oliver into her small circle of friends and allowing their friendship to bloom. She was thrilled at the prospect that maybe, just maybe, life was giving her one last chance at having the family and the future she had only dreamed of before. Everything had been going well between her and Oliver until that night when his warm and tender hands had touched her where it mattered. What he had meant to be a gesture of love and passion had triggered her past trauma, conjuring up all the horrible memories and feelings of guilt and self-hate that she thought she had already forgotten and forgiven herself for.

In the past several weeks of not seeing Oliver since spring break, Felicity had ample time to process what had happened that night and why. She'd spoken with her mother about it, and Donna had been a patient and insightful counselor. Caitlyn had also been a phone call away and a dependable shoulder to lean on. Felicity realized that she will never forget her past with Cooper, but that didn't mean she couldn't rise above it. She realized that there will always be times in her life when she'd remember how much it had hurt, but she didn't have to let it hurt her anymore. She realized that because she had already forgiven herself, she could move forward with head held high. She could love without fearing that she was going to be lied to again, or that she was going to mess up somebody's family all over again. John and Lyla had congratulated her one afternoon when she shared with them her musings, and they happily reaffirmed that she was no longer the person she used to be. She could do this, because she had become someone else – someone ready and willing to be with Oliver Queen.

Initially, Felicity had been utterly miserable for pushing him away, especially without giving him the benefit of an explanation. She had wanted to call him the very next day after he left her apartment, to ask him if they could talk, but she hesitated. What would she tell him? How was she supposed to explain to him about Cooper? What would he think of her when she tells him that she had had an affair with a married man? Her fear of being rejected had been greater than her desire to make things right with him, so she stalled over spring break, until her worries and anxieties got the better of her, and she decided that opening up to Oliver was never going to happen and that she would never be ready to pursue a serious relationship with any guy, for that matter, because she'd already been damaged.

But the more she missed Oliver, the more she began to rethink her position. Gradually, her heart and her mind changed as her mother and her friends talked some sense into her and patiently goaded her back to the realm of reason and reality. Just about the same time that Oliver had started sending her coffee and treats, Felicity had come to acknowledge her true feelings for the man and to realize that she truly cared for him more than a regular friend usually does. The evening before her dissertation defense when Connor came bringing her cinnamon rolls and an espresso from his father's kitchen, Felicity thought it was about time she reciprocated his thoughtful and courageous attempts at reconnecting with her. When Oliver turned up at her dissertation defense the next day, Felicity was overjoyed.

********************************

And so, there she was on that delightful Saturday morning near the end of spring, heading out the door to meet Oliver for their morning run around campus. Once more.

"Hi!" Felicity greeted Oliver spiritedly.

She approached him from behind, and literally so, because he appeared to have bent over to tie his shoe and had not noticed her coming near. His spandex-covered bottom was in full view, and Felicity had to shut her eyes for a moment and take a deep breath to keep herself from ogling him inappropriately. This was her second chance, and she didn't want to mess things up between them by giving in to lustful thoughts at a time when they were just beginning to rebuild their relationship.

"Hey!" Oliver returned her greeting warmly.

He had just straightened up and turned around only to find Felicity standing right behind him with her hands crossed in front of her chest. She was looking up at the sky, avoiding his gaze, which was a good thing for her, because if she hadn't been pretending to be cloud-watching, she would have been undoubtedly embarrassed by the way his gaze was fixed on her figure.

Oliver stared at her from head to foot, briefly admiring her attractive athletic look, which he really missed seeing. Like her, he had to shut his eyes for a moment and take a deep breath to keep himself from gawking at her inappropriately. He'd been given a second chance, and he didn't want to ruin things between them by giving in to lewd thoughts just as they were beginning to rekindle their budding romance.

"It's a lovely day for a run. Don't you think so?" Felicity remarked, snapping him out of his private thoughts.

"Yeah," Oliver replied. "Any day is a lovely day for anyone with a chance to run with you."

"Oh please! Oliver, you did not just drop a cheesy line on me, did you?" she teased.

He laughed. "I guess I did," he answered, "but I don't regret it. And, I'm not taking it back."

She smiled. "Don't worry, I won't make you. It was a sweet thing to say." Her smile widened as her face flushed a reddish hue. "Come on, let's go. I'll race you to the amphitheater!"

After running the perimeter of the university grounds three times and making good time, Oliver and Felicity decided to jog back to the atrium of her apartment building. On their way, they passed the greenhouse of the Institute of Botany near the parking lot of the College of Science. The gardener was just outside the greenhouse, watering some potted herbs there. The guy had earphones on and was listening to music and didn't bother to notice his surroundings as he went about his chore. Oliver had already jogged past him scot free, but Felicity did not fare as well. She thought she could hop over the hose no sweat, just like Oliver did just a second or two ago. But as she passed behind the gardener, the man stepped into the greenhouse and yanked the hose towards him without looking back. Felicity's foot got caught! She tripped on the hose and landed hard on the ground, screeching loud enough for Oliver to skid to a stop and look back.

As Oliver ran back to her, Felicity tried to get back on her feet, but as soon as she shifted her weight on the injured foot, she winced in pain and stumbled back down on the moist grass. She attempted to stand on her own a second time, but the excruciating pain on her ankle was too much to bear. Oliver knelt down beside her and cupped one side of her contorted face with his hand. "Are you okay?" he asked with a concerned look on his face.

Felicity bit her lip so that she wouldn't bark "Do I look like I'm okay?!" at him, and just shook her head. She was in pain. Her entire right side, including her hair was also covered in some grass and wet soil. Surely he would understand if she had actually snarled at him for asking such a dumb question. It didn't help that the gardener hadn't even noticed that he had injured someone and was still busy watering plants inside the greenhouse.

"Where does it hurt?" Oliver asked her.

"My right ankle," she answered, lifting her leg slightly to show him. "It got caught in the hose and I tripped. I must have twisted it."

"May I take a look?" he asked, smiling at her.

In the midst of an accident, her pair of blue met his pair of blue, and at that exact moment, they both knew. They had already reconnected and gained each other back.

Felicity nodded, and Oliver proceeded to remove her running shoe and her sports sock. He examined her foot and her ankle. An angry bruise was beginning to form and turn a reddish-purplish color on the very spot she was massaging with her fingers.

"I think it's just a sprained ankle, but it's better if we have a specialist take a look just to be sure. I can take you to the hospital, if that's okay with you? It might be a good idea to have an x-ray done as well," Oliver suggested.

"O—kay," Felicity replied. "Help me get up."

Felicity lifted her arms for him to pull her up. He was going to, but he had a better idea (and so he thought). He shifted to position and prepared to carry her. He slid one arm under her knees and placed his other arm beneath her back.

"What are you doing?" Felicity asked incredulously. She had a pretty good idea what he was about to do.

"Well, you can't put pressure on the ankle, so you can't possibly walk the last five hundred meters back to your apartment. I'm carrying you the rest of the way," Oliver explained.

"You can't!" she exclaimed.

Quickly realizing the implications of those two short words, Felicity immediately tried to clarify what she meant. But what came out of her mouth was, "Not that I don't think you are physically able to lift me. What with those firm and well-tone muscles of yours? Of course you can! I meant that you can't possibly carry a grown woman all the way back. You might drop me or something. Not that I'm too heavy. Of course not! I'm not overweight. I eat right and exercise too, as you well know, because I try my best to stay healthy and fit and well within my BMI, and-"

"Fe-li-ci-ty…"

Her name rolled out of his mouth with a mixture of tenderness and intensity that took her breath away, cut her off at mid-babble, and rendered her speechless. He, on the other hand, fought an inner battle as his eyes shifted from her eyes to her lips, which were just inches away from his own.

Oliver successfully resisted the urge to kiss her right then and there. He said, "Believe me, Felicity, I am well aware of how fit you are." He paused, staring right back into her eyes, hoping she understood what he was driving at. "It's okay," he continued, "I understand completely if you're not comfortable with me carrying you. But your ankle is injured, and I'd hate for it to get worse. I think I am physically able to carry you the rest of the way. I'm sorry if I was too quick to assume that you wouldn't mind me doing that. So now, I'm asking… nicely. Will you please let me carry you in my arms?"

Felicity blinked once and then hummed a very soft "Mm-hmm" as she nodded in acquiescence. The flutter in her stomach and the lump in her throat kept her from saying anything more.

"What was that?" Oliver asked. He had heard her; he merely wanted to tease.

"That was a yes," she muttered under her breath.

Oliver chuckled, and once more he positioned his arms underneath her. When he was ready, she locked her arms around his neck as he pushed himself up from kneeling position. Suddenly, he let out a loud, mortifying groan. "Ugh!"

"What?!" Felicity yelled as Oliver fell back down on one knee. He managed to keep from dropping her by supporting one of his arms with the thigh and knee that hadn't made contact with the ground.

"I think I strained my back!" he replied, still groaning in pain in between deep breaths.

"What?!" she cried out in disbelief. Now they were both injured. How in the world were they going to get back to her apartment?

Felicity slowly maneuvered herself out of his firm hold. Even with the back pain that burned and radiated to his extremities, Oliver had not let go of her. When she was safely on the grass again, he folded his knees and sat on his heels to relax a bit.

"How did that happen?" Felicity asked, more calmly this time.

Oliver huffed out a breath. "I don't know. This… hadn't been a problem with me before."

She wanted to ask him if he was okay, but she remembered how stupid that question had been when he was the one asking her a while back, so she relented.

"What are we going to do now?" she asked instead.

Oliver thought for a moment. Surely there was a solution to their predicament. "John?" Oliver suggested that she call their friend, hoping that John Diggle was on duty that day and could help them out.

"Right," Felicity replied.

She unfastened the Velcro on her arm band to free her phone and then made the call. It was a good thing John was working that day. Within minutes, his car pulled over right in front of them. John helped the two of them get up and get into his car. He drove them to the E.R. of Starling General. On the short ride to the hospital, Felicity explained what had happened, twice interjecting how angry she was at that apathetic gardener.

Just before the car came to a stop on the driveway of the E.R., John teased them. "Well, maybe this incident is just the kind of reminder that you both need," he remarked with a smirk.

"A reminder of what exactly?" Felicity asked John, turning to Oliver to see if he was just as clueless as she was.

"A reminder that you two might want to do something about whatever it is that you've been dancing around all this time," Diggle replied with a smug look on his face. "Because if you haven't noticed it yet, you two are not getting any younger."

No one could pay John Diggle enough bucks to make him stop grinning all day that day… and the days after that. Whatever happened between the time Oliver and Felicity were wheeled into the ER that morning and the time they were both discharged from physical rehab, John knew that his teasing had somehow worked. Because when he picked them up from the hospital just before lunch to bring them home, his friends quietly held hands during the entire ride back. And then, before Oliver got out of the car when they stopped in front of Connor's Brew, he and Felicity shared the most passionate kiss that John had ever seen between two people who were "just friends."

The following weekend was Connor's college graduation and Felicity's graduation from graduate school. Oliver invited his family and the Diggles to a special dinner at Table Salt to celebrate this major milestone in the lives of the two people that mattered most in his life now. Before his son, his parents, his sister, and their good friends, Oliver offered two toasts – the first was to his son and his future, while the second was to his future with Felicity Smoak – after he announced that he and Felicity were now officially… a couple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason why this chapter ends rather abruptly with what reads like a summarized resolution is that there will be a final update after this. An epilogue will clarify what happened in the hospital and narrate what will happen to Oliver and Felicity in the future, after that family dinner at Table Salt. I hope you stick around for that one.
> 
> As the story winds down to a close, you might consider bidding this fic farewell by leaving a comment or review that would encourage or help me improve. Your thoughts mean a lot. Thank you for following and reading this! I had fun writing it.


	6. Two-part Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first part tells what happened to Olicity after they got together and reveals briefly what happened in the hospital after the jogging incident. The second part tells about the near future - from the wedding and onwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it, the final update! I hope you like how the story ends, and if you have the time, please do let me know how reading and following this has been for you. Once again, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a fun mini-adventure. :-)

It was a mildly humid yet unusually hot summer day. The air conditioning in the coffee shop below had been turned on the entire day to keep customers comfortable. Oliver tried to study in one of the unoccupied booths all afternoon until dinner time in order to cut down on energy consumption and, of course, expense. But soon after Felicity arrived and helped him and Thea close shop, he had moved all his books, laptop, and school stuff upstairs to his apartment. He turned on the AC in his bedroom and set up a makeshift study area in it because he was sure he wasn't going to be able to concentrate on his work with the heat, and there was only one AC in his apartment.

While Felicity was busy making coffee in the kitchen, he changed into more comfortable clothes. He put on a pair of black-and-red Starling City Rockets jersey shorts and an off-white muscle shirt made of soft and thin cotton material that really didn't do a good job of keeping his perfectly sculpted muscles hidden from view. He then turned his laptop back on from hibernation and shuffled his papers, arranging them so that Felicity wouldn't have a hard time figuring out which one was which.

Felicity had been helping Oliver with school work. It was his last semester in business school, and he was anxious to complete all the requirements and finally get his bachelor's degree. Towards the end of the spring semester, he had contemplated on skipping the summer term and just enroll his remaining courses in the fall semester so that he could spend more time with Felicity and Connor, who had already graduated last May. He had always taken Connor to summer camping trips as his son was growing up, and every other year since business started to take off, he had taken his family to out-of-town vacations that were well within the family budget. But when Sandra passed away, he had been too sad to plan anything special for him and his son. Connor had understood and had never asked for any of those; in fact, even when his dad and Felicity had already become a couple, he had been the number one advocate of putting off for next summer the camping trip that Oliver had started to plan for him and Felicity, in favor of his father graduating as soon as possible. Felicity couldn't have agreed more.

So there he was, agonizing over his last few undergraduate courses in the heat of summer when most of the students and faculty in the university were off on vacation. He was struggling particularly with one course, which he couldn't, for the life of him, understand or appreciate in the beginning – Research and Statistical Methods. Oliver was doing fine in the first few weeks, but when the professor started on topics that required mathematical ability, he felt as if a vicious virus had messed with the operating system of his brain (which was Felicity's analogy, by the way). He didn't understand – or maybe, he couldn't accept – why a business major was required to take such a course. Every time he came across a difficult topic or skill to learn, he'd start a litany of complaints that Thea and Connor had gradually learned to ignore.

Not Felicity though. She was patient with him, but stern. When she agreed to tutor him for this course, she had made it clear that she wasn't going to go soft on him and that she wasn't going to tolerate him giving up. She told him that dropping the subject was out of the question and that she was going to make sure he passes the course, not just by the skin of his teeth, but with a fairly decent mark that would make them all proud of him. Sure enough, she made a world of difference. Because of her intelligence and perseverance, measures of central tendency began to make sense to him, pleasantly recalling that he had encountered concepts like mean, median, and mode way back in middle school but had paid more attention to Tommy or to the girls in his class than to his math teacher, whose name and face he couldn't even remember. He began to understand big words like variability, variance, covariance, and deviation, which he had previously thought were synonyms. Under his girlfriend's guidance, Oliver's confidence sky-rocketed. Her constant encouragement boosted his self-image as he was affirmed that he, too, had the smarts. He only regretted that he hadn't taken his studies more seriously when he was younger. He wondered how differently his life would have turned out if he had, and if he had met Felicity way back in high school.

In the past week, however, the irritable monster in him was starting to show its ugly head again. A month ago, his professor had assigned a short-term qualitative study as the final individual assessment for the class. It was supposed to evaluate how well they acquired the knowledge and skills in the course by making them do real-life research and then writing a paper about it. Oliver chose to do a descriptive study on Connor's Brew customers and look into which types of beverages were frequently ordered by men and women, students, professionals, singles and married people, and senior citizens. He had already finished conducting the survey about two weeks ago, and fortunately, Felicity thought that he had already met the ideal number of respondents that would make up his research sample. With her help, he had begun analyzing data from the survey questionnaires all week last week. The problem was that Oliver was stuck with data interpretation because it turned out that certain statistical concepts were still unclear to him. He'd been griping over that all day, and the weather and temperature hadn't made things easier for him. He knew that Felicity would be able to straighten things out, and he had been waiting impatiently for her to arrive from a day-long faculty academic planning meeting.

"Everything's already set up in here," he hollered to his girlfriend from inside his bedroom. "You can come in anytime, sweetheart!"

Felicity's stomach still did somersaults every time Oliver called her "sweetheart." They'd been a couple for close to three months now, having gone on formal and informal dates almost every other day, and they had gotten to know each other much better, but there hasn't been a time when goose bumps hadn't broken out on her skin when Oliver called her sweetheart. She loved it very much. It was certainly more suitable for a middle-aged couple like them, and so much more endearing than "baby" or "babe" – repulsive words that made her cringe because those were the words that Cooper used to call her. When Oliver learned how she felt about those words, he was totally relieved; he didn't know what he would do if she asked him to call her "babe" because the word brought back memories of Laurel and Sandra, which he preferred to leave in his distant past. "Sweetheart" was very appropriate, Felicity thought, because it always reminded her of how they actually got together… over coffee and sweet treats. Also, this term of endearment really went well with how she preferred to call Oliver. She called him "honey," and judging from the way he'd flash a winning smile at her each time she spoke it, she knew he loved hearing her call him "honey" just as much as she loved hearing him call her "sweetheart."

"Be there in a sec, honey!" she replied with gusto.

Less than a minute later, Felicity walked barefoot into his bedroom, carrying two mugs of steaming hot black coffee. She had a feeling this was going to be an all-nighter, so a steady supply of caffeine was warranted. Oliver had texted an SOS with a frowny when she was in the meeting, and when she asked if it had something to do with his research project, Oliver told her that he was due for consultation with his professor the next day and still hadn't been able to figure out what to do about the analysis and interpretation of the data from his survey. While preparing coffee, she had composed herself and repeatedly told herself, "Keep calm, and keep him calm," which was something that probably might not happen given the amount of caffeine she had brewed in the kitchen.

After about three hours of helping Oliver use a computer software for statistical analysis and feeding data into the program, Felicity thought they were ready for another round of caffeine to keep them awake and focused. She had been sitting cross-legged beside him on the edge of his bed behind the table he had set up for their work, but when she moved to stand, he caught her wrist and squeezed it gently.

"Stay," he spoke softly.

"I was going to go get us another round of coffee," she said.

"I don't need coffee. I need you," he explained quite succinctly as he stroked her forearm.

Felicity bit her lower lip as she blushed, a small smile forming on her lips. Could anything be sweeter? For a moment they just gazed at each other, heart eyes glimmering with childlike mirth. (If Thea were there, she'd be rolling her eyes to her hairline in disgust. Conner would simply be shaking his head in amusement and leave them be.) Oliver tugged her towards him, and she landed on his lap, making her gasp and giggle a little.

"My head hurts with all these numbers and tables. I think I need a short break right now. A little cuddle might help," he told her, grinning.

He enveloped her with his muscular arms, and she just had to curl one hand on his bicep. Her other hand landed on his abs, which she stroked a few times before she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him rest his head on her chest.

"How does this feel?" she asked him with a mischievous, teasing tone.

"Perfect," he answered without opening his eyes. He was grinning like a fool.

They hugged each other without uttering any word for a couple of minutes, and then Felicity spoke, "Well, we'd better get back to work. I still think we need another round of black." She moved to get him to unlock his hold on her, but he tightened it instead. "Oliver…" He kept his eyes shut and pretended not to have heard what she said. She kept squirming in his arms, but he wouldn't let her go. "Honey, we still have a long way to go," she said. "You said you need to be able to show Dr. Grisham something tangible tomorrow."

Oliver growled in exasperation and discontent. "I just don't get why I need to present all these figures and charts. Can't I just tell him that more male customers prefer the hot drinks and more female customers like the cold ones? I can just say that most customers above fifty years old order regular coffee more frequently compared to the flavored ones, can't I?" He grumbled.

"Oliver…" Felicity responded calmly. "Presentation of data in a research study needs to be done meticulously. Before you get to the conclusions and recommendations part, you have to report the data from your findings in a logical and systematic way."

Of course, he knew that. He just didn't want to do it. He'd been staring at the screen of his laptop for hours, trying to figure out what to do with the data in the frequency and distribution tables. Felicity had been trying to help him interpret how the data on the respondents' gender, age, social status, civil status, etc. correlated with the data on the respondents' beverage choices. Though difficult, that had been comprehensible for the most part, but when she started explaining which statistical method they were supposed to use to test their findings for reliability and validity, she completely lost him. When they got to the part where the program converted their data and findings into diagrams with numbers and letters (Greek ones, too!) and lines that were straight, diagonal, and dotted, his brain short-circuited and then shut down.

Oliver just didn't get why it was so important for him to know what normal curves were and whether or not the results of his survey were skewed. The only type of curves that he had been very familiar with for a huge part of his younger years was the type he'd traced with his hands on the bodies of women. For twenty years, he had mastered those curves on only one woman – his wife. In the last two years since he had lost her, he thought that he had lost that expertise as well. Female curves hadn't even grabbed his attention. But now he was with Felicity, and, well, her curves were something else. Each time he noticed them, it took every ounce of self-control for him to keep his hands off her and be a decent gentleman.

As the days, weeks, and months passed by, he found it harder and harder to keep it together when he was with her. It became particularly difficult and complicated when she had opened up about her ex-boyfriend Cooper Seldon. He appreciated her for telling him about it for several reasons. First, it helped him understand why she reacted adversely to his touch on the night of the gala. He finally understood where she was coming from, and he felt compassion for her, promising that he would do everything he could to help her get over such a traumatic experience in her past. He didn't want to be responsible for another one of her meltdowns. Second, it helped them establish their boundaries. They had agreed that they would take it slow to give each other time to adjust to their new relationship and learn the tricky balance between his manner of physically showing affection and her more conservative standards for intimacy (although they did laugh when they realized how ironic it was for forty-year-olds to be "taking it slow" when they were both obviously almost over the hill). But Oliver loved her, and thus, he respected her and her wishes, and she loved him all the more for it. Exercising restraint wouldn't kill him, he figured.

"Hey, where did you go?" Felicity asked him, a tiny laughter escaping her lips. She had noticed his silence.

"Huh?" Oliver responded, vaguely registering what she meant. "Oh. I uh… I was just thinking…"

"I'm guessing that whatever it is, it has absolutely nothing to do with statistics," she commented.

Oliver sighed. His forehead creased, but there was a hint of a smile on his lips. Felicity couldn't figure out what he was going to say. He was quiet for a while, contemplating what his response would be. He wasn't sure if this was the right time, or if he still needed to give it some more time. He had actually been putting off telling her about his desire to take their relationship to a much deeper level of commitment. They had been together for just close to three months, after all. He'd been hesitating, because he didn't want her to think he was moving too fast; he didn't want their family and friends to think that theirs was just another whirlwind romance that wouldn't make it past the honeymoon stage.

Yet Oliver didn't know how much longer he could rein in his emotions and control his desires for this amazing woman who had turned his world upside-down. The mere mention of her name made him giddy and light-headed. Being with her more and more frequently animated every single cell in his body. Sharing lessons from the past, his present thoughts, and his dreams for the future with her established a soul-level connection between them that went beyond mere physical attraction. They had only known each other for close to a year; nevertheless, the stronger the bond grew between them in such a short time, the more profound their intimacy became in the different aspects of their relationship, so much so that Oliver felt that physical intimacy was the only line left uncrossed. Just then, he recalled a Scripture quote he had heard many times over during weddings: "It is better to marry than to burn." That gave him the boldness to speak with a calm conviction.

"Felicity…," he began, "why are we waiting?"

"Waiting?" Felicity wasn't sure what he was referring to.

"I mean, what are we waiting for, really? Do you remember our talk when we were at the hospital?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," she replied. "How could I forget the talk we had during rehab?" She chuckled as the memory of that day when they had their jogging accident replayed in her mind.

"Well, I was just thinking… I have a pretty stable business. You have a job that you love doing and pays well too. We are both incontestably 'of age' and capable of supporting a family. We have been… for quite some time now, actually," he paused to chuckle a bit. "And as John so aptly helped us realize at the hospital, we are really not getting any younger. I told you that day that I was 100% sure about how I feel about you, and you said that you feel the same way about me. Except now, I'm even surer that what I have for you is more than just fleeting emotion." He took a deep breath and said, "I… I love you, Felicity. I care about you a lot, and I want to take care of you and spend the rest of my life – what's left of it – with none other than you. You sat in that wheelchair holding my hand while I lay flat on my stomach with a heated pack on my lower back, remember? I asked if you would consider committing to a relationship… with me. You… you warned me that because of your abandonment issues and your past failed relationship, you were only willing to be with someone who was willing to take you all the way to the altar. I took that challenge. I chose to be with you. Because I knew then what I know now… that you are my always, and I just want the chance to be yours. Sweetheart, I'd take you to the altar right now if… if you love me enough to let me… if you're 100% sure that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, too. I guess… what I'm trying to say is-"

Oliver didn't get to finish what he was trying to say because Felicity's lips crashed against his in a searing kiss that caught him by pleasant surprise. Her fingers ruffled his hair fiercely. His arms pulled her even closer to him as his hands roamed all over her body. He didn't even notice that one of his hands started rubbing soft, slow circles on her hip, but she didn't mind, much less notice it, because she felt safe in his arms. For both of them, it felt like finally finding home after years of wandering and losing their way.

When they pulled back only because they needed some air, Felicity lovingly said to him, "That was some speech, Mr. Queen." She was teary-eyed, and she tried hard to keep from crying. "And here I thought I was the one who babbled and spoke in sentence fragments."

Oliver simply chuckled and then pulled her into him again. He kissed her this time. It was not as intense as the one they shared just a moment ago, but it was just as unmistakably sincere. He poured into that kiss his heart and soul, hoping that she understood how serious and determined he was about his interrupted proposition.

Felicity did understand, because when she pulled back just inches away from his face, she said, "I love you too. And, Oliver honey, the answer is yes." She beamed at him proudly.

"But I haven't asked the question yet," Oliver mildly protested, squeezing her tight in his arms.

"You didn't have to," she said. "You said it in that kiss." She pecked him on the nose.

He captured her lips once again and deepened the kiss, sending shockwaves throughout her body. She moaned, he groaned. Unexpectedly, she caught both his hands and placed them on both sides of her pelvis. He smiled into the kiss, their lips parting slightly. He understood clearly what her gesture was telling him: that their love had finally healed her, and that she was no longer frightened by her past, no longer uncomfortable with this kind of closeness.

As he gave her hips a gentle squeeze, he remembered the boundaries they had set and decided to honor them. He pulled back slowly and looked up at her, grinned mischievously. "Now, what was that kiss trying to say?" he asked.

She answered, "That you can't wait until our wedding night to have all of me…" She sighed contentedly and then added, "…but that you will… because you are a truly remarkable and respectable man."

Felicity beamed at him, but soon spoke again, to Oliver's delight. "And to speed up the process of getting to our wedding night, I'm offering you an incentive," she offered. She broke away from his embrace and moved to stand. "We will finish the data analysis and interpretation for your consultation tomorrow, you will expedite the completion of this research project before deadline, and I will marry you as soon as you come down that stage after receiving your diploma. How's that?" She tilted her head and squinted, waiting for his response.

"Oh, you're good, Ms. Smoak," he declared, shaking his head while laughing.

"Best teacher in the world!" she remarked with a wink.

"Fine! It's a deal," he agreed. He took her hand and kissed it.

"Great! But you still owe me a ring," she teased as she made a run for the door to fetch more coffee.

**************************

Epilogue:

Oliver Queen graduated from Starling City University with a bachelor's degree in business at the end of the summer term. His family and close friends were there at the graduation rites in the morning. Felicity was there, of course. She kept her end of the deal and married him on the same day in the gardens of the Queen Estate where the simple ceremony and reception were held in the early evening and witnessed only by close relatives and good friends like John and Lyla Diggle and Caitlyn Snow.

Moira and Thea had helped with the wedding preparations. Oliver and Felicity were more than pleased and impressed with what mother and daughter were able to pull off with just a few weeks' notice. Donna Smoak had flown in from Vegas a few days before the big day to help her daughter with last minute details, and so did his best friend Tommy Merlyn and his wife Laurel, Oliver's former girlfriend, who arrived from Coast City on the day of the graduation and the wedding. Robert Queen was tremendously proud of his son, but not half as proud as Connor was of his father's achievements in both love and learning.

After the wedding reception, Diggle drove Oliver and Felicity to the airport where they boarded a commercial plane to Greece for their honeymoon. They spent three fantastic weeks on the islands of Santorini. Felicity had done extensive research on popular honeymoon destinations and immediately fell in love with the crescent-shaped group of islands after seeing a photograph of the island's famous Caldera against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset. She had since dreamed of exchanging romantic kisses with her groom on the very spot shown on the online travelogue. It hadn't been difficult for her to convince Oliver about granting her dream honeymoon. (He would have flown her to the moon and back if she had asked him to.) But when she showed him information about Santorini being a culinary paradise that promises "the ultimate gastronomic experience," he immediately gave the green light to book airline tickets, hotel accommodations, and island tours.

They did get their wishes and more. Felicity got her fair share of exceptional encounters with wines – many of them, red – produced from grapes that were grown from the island's fertile volcanic soil. Oliver bought several recipe books of Greek and Mediterranean cuisines, intending to try them in his kitchen and maybe even to experiment with some of the salads and entrees as new inclusions on the menu of Connor's Brew. They enjoyed the white, red, and black sand and pebble beaches on the islands, and were awed by the spectacular rock formations and extraordinary lunar landscapes they saw during island-hopping. Best of all, they enjoyed their first most intimate moments as husband and wife in their luxury hotel suite, in the plush cabin of the yacht they rented, and even once… at twilight out on the beach in a secluded yet safe alcove where their tour guide brought them. They fell in love with the place. They grew fond of their romantic getaway, and the charm of what was known as "the pearl of Aegean" captivated them. They agreed to return to Santorini for their first anniversary, and Oliver booked a suite in another hotel in one of the other islands before they flew back to Starling City.

Felicity continued to teach at the university but also took on consulting jobs for Queen Consolidated at the insistence of her father-in-law who had wanted someone he could trust to help out in the company's cyber-security upgrades. Robert knew that his daughter-in-law was among the best IT experts in the country (and perhaps, even the world) – which he flaunted at every opportunity – and he wisely maximized the opportunity now that she was family, for the good of the business that would eventually benefit not only his children but his own grandchildren.

One year after they were married, Oliver did open a second branch of Connor's Brew in the main educational district of Central City. Connor volunteered to manage it and to supervise the operations of the original coffee shop, so he moved there and rented an apartment just three blocks away from the shop. He came back to visit his family in Starling once a month and on holidays. Thea went solo, opening her own branch of Connor's Brew in Starling City's business district, one block away from the QC building, without having to pay her brother franchise dues. It became an instant success as it was frequented by the employees and clients of her family's company. She hired a barista named Roy Harper, whom she eventually fell in love with, and married after two years.

When the Queens had returned from their honeymoon, the Diggles broke the news that Lyla was again expecting. Their second child, John Jr., was born seven months after. The boy became Oliver's godchild, just like eight-year-old Sara had been Felicity's godchild. When John Jr. was nearly two, Lyla was pregnant again, so she resigned from her job at the government agency to be a full-time wife and mom to their growing family. John continued to work as the head of security at the university.

When Felicity learned that John and Lyla were expecting their third child, she cried on-and-off for days. She felt frustrated that after three years, she and Oliver couldn't get pregnant, and that her time was running out. She felt sorry for herself for being too old to conceive, repeatedly apologizing to Oliver for failing him. Oliver constantly assured her that there was absolutely nothing to apologize for, saying that he did not marry her just to have children and that he loved her just the same, with or without them. Yet Felicity seemed inconsolable during those days. Nothing he said made her feel better. He feared that her sadness and disappointment might worsen the day she finds out that Thea, too, would be expecting.

What was most frustrating was the fact that she and Oliver had done their part. Prior to the wedding, she had gone to the doctor for a check-up. She had been insecure initially each time she thought about the fast-approaching wedding night and honeymoon, and her mother suggested that she see her OB to make sure that everything was still "okay down there" at her age (Donna's words). The OB had done a thorough physical exam and a sonogram of her reproductive organs, yet despite the fact that the doctor had assured her that there were no physical and anatomical problems with her, she often struggled with anxieties about the possibility or impossibility of mothering Oliver's child.

On their second year of marriage, they had also consulted three different fertility specialists about the alternatives that were available for them. All three medical experts had suggested that they seriously consider in vitro fertilization or IVF if they really wanted to get pregnant soon, because beyond age 43, the chances of giving birth to babies with congenital anomalies increased. Felicity had understood that the older she got, the riskier it was for her to go through a safe pregnancy and deliver a child without complications. They had tried undergoing IVF procedure once, but it had not worked out, and Felicity was at the brink of devastation. Oliver had hated seeing her so unhappy and miserable. After a very emotional, tear-filled talk that reassured them of each other's love and devotion, they both had decided to just let nature take its course and to be content with each other, whether or not they would have a child of their own.

On her forty-third birthday in January, Felicity indulged herself in one last all-night crying session in Oliver's embrace, and then she let go. She resigned herself to the fact that she may never conceive, never be the biological mother of Oliver's son or daughter. She promised herself and her husband that she would keep on loving Connor as her own son.

Three months after, she was delayed. It wasn't the first time this happened in the last three decades that she has had her period, so she didn't think much of it. When her period still didn't come after some more time had elapsed, she became worried. She became even more anxious when she started having dizzy spells, palpitations, mood swings, and strange temperature changes. She opened up to Oliver and told him – in between sobs – how she feared she was already undergoing early menopause. Oliver told her not to jump to conclusions without getting the facts straight first and suggested that she go see her doctor the very next day. He tried his best to calm her down, rubbing circles on her back until she fell asleep out of exhaustion.

In the morning, Oliver himself accompanied her to the OB's clinic. He held her hand in the waiting room, in the doctor's office, and even in the examination room when the doctor asked him to come inside and join them.

"Mr. and Mrs. Queen," the doctor began to explain her diagnosis of Felicity's condition, "I'm very sorry to disappoint you…" The doctor had not even finished what she was saying, but Oliver and Felicity had started to feel even more discouraged at her tone. Felicity squeezed her husband's hand, as they prepared themselves to receive bad news, but the doctor went on to say with a brighter tone of voice, "…but Felicity is not going through early menopause. I'm quite sure she's pregnant." The doctor smiled.

The couple gasped in shock at the revelation. Neither one of them spoke. Neither of them breathed. Neither could even blink in astonishment.

Pregnant.

How? The news was too good to be true.

When the doctor sensed that Oliver and Felicity were having a hard time letting the news sink in, she took the liberty to speak again. "Mr. Queen, I think your wife is going to have a baby. Her cervix is closed, and all the things she's been experiencing are signs and symptoms of early gestation. I could do a sonogram to confirm it, if you'd like." The doctor smiled again.

Oliver and Felicity were still too dumbfounded to respond, but tears were already rolling down Felicity's cheeks. After a few seconds of silence, Oliver said softly, "Yes, please do that."

The doctor nodded and told Oliver that he could stay and watch the procedure…

…which confirmed that his dear wife was indeed about five or six weeks pregnant.

Oliver and Felicity watched the pulsating gestational sac in her womb on the monitor. Oliver had joined his wife's crying spree, and soon they were hugging each other in joyful wonder. The doctor congratulated them, happily offered tissue for wiping both the gel on her stomach and the tears on their faces, and then left to give them some privacy to rejoice together. The Queens left the clinic, hearts overflowing with indescribable mirth. They were going to be parents in eight months.

That December on Christmas Eve, Miracle Queen was born and became the delight of every member of the Queen and Smoak families and their friends.

The delivery was just as difficult as Felicity's pregnancy had been. She had suffered from all-day sickness from her first trimester up until the middle of her second trimester, and one time she even had to be hospitalized for severe vomiting and dehydration because she couldn't keep anything down, including water. By the time she had been able to eat regular foods again, she had already lost ten pounds. Her drastic weight loss had her and Oliver worrying for the baby, but the OB had assured them that there was nothing to be worried about because hyperemesis gravidarum would pass and was not really a cause for alarm, and that difficult pregnancies were common to pregnant women over 40.

The doctor (and the husband) kept a close watch on Felicity. She came in for check-ups every two week for close monitoring of her blood pressure and sugar levels and for the monitoring of the baby's growth and development. Felicity feared that the baby might have genetic abnormalities because of her age, but on the sixth month a sonogram was done and it cleared the baby from congenital anomalies. On her last trimester, Felicity's appetite was at its peak, and she had gained back all the weight she had lost.

The day she delivered Mic – as they fondly called their baby girl – and her first cry rang out in the delivery room, Felicity knew that all the discomforts and inconveniences had truly been worth it all. Oliver was there with her, holding her hand all throughout the labor, which took ten long hours. The doctor had offered to do a cesarean section because the labor was beginning to put stress on the baby and was tiring out Felicity fast. But Felicity held on, determined to bring her baby into the world wide awake. Oliver cheered her on, awed by the courage and strength of his wife. On the eleventh hour, she pushed with all her might, and the most beautiful baby girl Oliver had ever laid eyes on was finally out.

From the recovery room, Felicity was wheeled into her private room on a gurney by two nursing aids. Mic was wheeled into the room in a bassinet by Oliver, alongside her mother. A midwife soon joined them, assisting Felicity in feeding her baby. At first, Mic had difficulty latching on to her mother's breast, and Felicity felt very uncomfortable, adjusting to the initial painful sensations of breast-feeding. But with a little coaching and help from the midwife, mother and daughter soon found their connection. When they were all settled, the hospital staff left, and the Queen family had their first private time together.

As little Mic was quietly sucking on her mother's breast for nourishment, Felicity and Oliver exchanged knowing looks. "She's beautiful," Oliver whispered. Felicity smiled and said, "Yeah. She's perfect. We did good, didn't we?" It wasn't a question; it was more of an affirmation. Oliver nodded.

They were a family at last.

Oliver sat on the hospital bed beside his wife and put one arm around her, holding her close. His other hand came up to her cheek, and he kissed her on the lips affectionately. "I love you," they said adoringly to each other. His hand moved to touch their baby girl's cheek with his pinky finger. "We love you," they told their tiny daughter.

As they gazed upon their precious bundle of joy and held each other close, Oliver and Felicity fully grasped the truth… that it is never ever too late to find true love and lasting joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Farewell to this story and to all its readers and followers. Thank you very much!
> 
> Comments and reviews are welcome and appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Comments and reviews are welcome and very much appreciated. I'm testing the waters if this fic is worth finishing and reading. I plan for it to be just three chapters long, or four if an epilogue is necessary.
> 
> For those of you who have been following LOVE DARES, I'm so, so sorry! I know I'm way behind posting schedule, but the idea for this Olicity AU just popped into my head and I couldn't resist the pull to squeeze it into my very hectic schedule and write it down before I forget the details. I just couldn't shake the thought of Oliver as a heartbroken widower meeting Felicity as a hope-less spinster. I hope it's worth your while.


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